CIA - East Europe "Will Pay"

Cheriff Bassiouni, the UN's representative in Aghanistan, explains how the CIA's torture network began in 2001. If the Bush administration is primarily responsible, Poland, Hungary and Romania also played their part.

"Poland, Romania and Hungary, being members of the European system, are gravely responsibile for having collaborated or allowed the CIA to torture people from around the world in secret prisons in their presumably sovereign nations. All of these countries have signed the European Convention on Human Rights and other EU treaties outlawing torture. They have committed clear and unquestionable violations of these European conventions. There have been both prosecutable civil and criminal violations". It is in these harsh terms of "complicity and collusion" with Washington that Cheriff Bassiouni spoke in his interview with Il Manifesto. Bassiouni was UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's representative on Human Rights in Afghanistan in 2004 and is the author of a report about the secret prison scandal in which the CIA tortured Afghan and foreign citizens. His investigation was published in May and it angered Washington and his mandate [in Afghanistan] was not renewed.

Q: Professor Bassiouni, how do you interpret these revelations of secret CIA prisons in eastern countries, which these countries deny, including Bush's "we do not torture"?

Bassiouni: This method of acting in secret without impunity will continue until they are discovered. It's part of how the CIA has operated since the Cold War. America now operates illegally based on secret "executive orders" from President Bush: it's a form of dictatorship that which I cannot how understand how America can resist. The CIA operates in Afghanistan or in Italy, such as the case of the imam Omar, who was taken to Egypt to be tortured. From their 14 military bases in Afghanistan or their secret prisons in Eastern Europe or other locations in Asia, they act in a totally way totally contrary to international law, in violation of human rights. My investigation upset Washington. But the investigation will continue and the international consequences will catch up to Bush.

Q: Poland and Hungary are in the EU. Romania is slated to enter in 2007. What are the future consequences of these violations of human rights treaties and conventions against torture?

Bassiouni: The questions of adhering to the EU's rules by these countries clearly requires them to follow the Convention on Human Rights. These obligations have not been honored, indeed the violations by these governments is incontrovertible. The intelligence agencies of these countries form part of the institutional organs of a sovereign state. And in Poland and the other Eastern European countries they have collaborated with the government in Washington and therefore they are legally prosecutable.

Q: As the governments of Poland, Hungary and Romania have stated they know nothing about this, what can the EU's organs do in terms of legal litigation?

Bassiouni: These countries must respond to these serious crimes committed by their state organs, their intelligence agencies. If the CIA operates or interferes in Poland or in any other third country, the responsibility falls on the Polish government and of the other countries which collaborated with the government in Washington to violate the laws that all EU countries must follow. In this case, crimes against torture and violations of human rights. On top of that the CIA agents who are responsible for these crimes are criminally responsible.

Q: And who in Washington is legally responsible for the crimes of torture committed by the CIA in their secret eastern prisons?

Bassiouni: The American intelligence agencies operated under the authorization of President Bush, who after September 11 has created a system and organization to consolidate the "global war on terror".

Q: What is the structure of this CIA torture network?

Bassiouni: Since February 2002, the CIA has operated with intelligence agencies of allied countries in the "global war on terror". Starting in 2001, Bush issued executive order, described in memorandum 13224, which launched the "joint doctrine for detainees operation". This presidential directive must be renewed annually. The last time it was renewed was on March 23, 2005. In that administration document it is outlined: "Any detainee or presumably connected to terrorist organizations is henceforth classifed an enemy combatant". In the last three years, the Pentagon's strategy for this "mission" has been to create a structure and organization of secret prisons to torture and to move people around, as an alternative to Guantanamo. In Afghanistan, at the air base in Bagram and in Kandahar, people are brought from all over the world by CIA aircraft and from there they are sent to the other 14 military centers for Americans to torture them. Others are transported from Afghanistan to secret prisons under American control - in Eastern Europe countries like Poland, Romania, Hungary and in Asia, the military base at Diego Garcia.

It should be mentioned right off the bat that Il Manifesto is an extremely leftist paper in Italy. It's also the one for which Giuliana Sgrena writes, the journalist who was nearly killed in Iraq (her driver and the Italian SISMI officer accompanying her were killed). She did not conduct this interview however.

As for who Mr. Cheriff Bassiouni is, he is originally from Egypt. He has been working for the UN for a while and is listed as one of the "architects" of the International Criminal Court. He worked on behalf of the UN in Serbia and is rather well disliked by Serbian groups who oppose his work in the prosecution of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

He's also worked for DePaul's University Law Department and is listed as the president of the International Human Rights Law Institute. You can find his entire bio here including:

In 1999, Professor Bassiouni was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the field of international criminal justice and for his contribution to the creation of the International Criminal Court. He has received medals from Austria, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. He has also received numerous academic and civic awards, including the Special Award of the Council of Europe; the Defender of Democracy Award, Parliamentarians for Global Action; and The Adlai Stevenson Award of the United Nations Association.

Clearly this guy is no fruitcake and has about 4 university degrees at the least, most of them from American universities.

As for that report that Bassiouni released, you can read it in its entirety here (PDF). Here's a "fun" little tidbit:

The independent expert has received accounts of actions that fall under the internationally accepted definition of torture. For example, a district governor from Paktia province who was assisting the Coalition forces was arrested, gagged, hooded and taken to a base in Urgun, where he was beaten, forced to stand in a stress position for a prolonged period of time, exposed to the cold, and denied food and water. He also reported the torture and sexual abuse of up to 20 other persons. When his identity was confirmed five days later, he was released, although the fate of the other detainees remains unclear.

An investigation by the Criminal Investigative Command led to a classified report obtained by a newspaper in the United States that recommends that 28 personnel be prosecuted in connection with the deaths of detainees held by United States forces. However, to date, prosecutions have been limited, raising questions about the interest of United States officials in investigating and prosecuting these cases. The independent expert also expresses serious concerns about the alleged transfer of some prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to Afghanistan as well as the process of informal rendition, whereby detainees are transferred to third-party countries where they are subjected to abuse and torture in clear violation of international human rights and humanitarian law. The Coalition forces’ use of distinct units that answer to different command and control structures is dangerously permeating the Afghan military and security organizations and remains a source of serious human rights violations. In general, the Coalition forces’ practice of placing themselves above and beyond the reach of the law must come to an end.

Yowks!

Although it didn't get much media attention at the time, the Chicago Tribune picked up on the story:

Cherif Bassiouni, the DePaul University law professor who last week lost his post as UN human-rights investigator in Afghanistan, said Thursday he believed the U.S. pushed him out to hide abuses in American-run prisons in the country and the possible transfer there of as many as 200 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"They have two groups of people they want to hide--the people in Afghan prisons and the people they transfer from Guantanamo," Bassiouni said in an interview. "The bigger exposure is the transfer of about 200 people from Guantanamo."

Bassiouni said he had heard reports the U.S. plans to transfer prisoners to Afghanistan from Guantanamo before opening the prison in Cuba to international inspectors.

He called the move part of a "well-known game" that governments around the world use to ease prison conditions and hide torture victims before allowing human-rights inspectors into facilities.

During his tenure as independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan, Bassiouni often criticized the U.S. for detaining prisoners without trial and denying human-rights monitors access to prisons.

Bassiouni said that twice he requested access to two U.S.-run military prisons in Afghanistan and twice was informed by U.S. authorities that his request had been denied.

"I would say, `I want to go see what's happening,' and they would say, `No you can't,'" Bassiouni said.

"My answer to them is there's no exemption [to the mandate]," Bassiouni continued. "When the UN says to monitor human rights in a country, they're not saying `except for what the U.S. is doing there.'

I have to say, that's just more disquieting news. The full report contains reported incidents of US forces engaging in all kinds of terrible behavior, including arbitrary arrests and abusive practices (otherwise known as "torture lite").

From Yale Global's June 16, 2005 issue:

In response to Bassiouni's report, the US government forced the UN to fire Bassiouni and to get rid of the position altogether. How can the US government credibly trumpet democracy and human rights while it continues to block attempts to hold it accountable on those same principles? Thus far, the Bush administration record for suppressing information about abuses is far more compelling than their record for sharing information.

I don't speak Hungarian or Polish but there's been little new about this story in the Romanian media. The last thing I saw was from November 5 when two former Romanian intelligence chiefs denied that the Romania had anything to do with secret prisons. In fact one, Ioan Talpes, said it's all just propaganda made up to smear Romania.

I'll stay on this as more information develops... or not. The shelf life of a story like this is pretty short.

Peace