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At least 54 countries involved in US global kidnap, detention, torture
A new report evidences over a quarter of the world’s governments covertly offered support to the United States global kidnap, detention and torture crimes.
“A 213-page report compiled by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organisation, says that at least 54 countries co-operated with the global kidnap, detention and torture operation that was mounted after 9/11, many of them in Europ,” reports The Guardian.
“Secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, designed to be conducted outside the United States under cover of secrecy, could not have been implemented without the active participation of foreign governments. These governments too must be held accountable,” stated OSJI.
“Despite the efforts of the United States and its partner governments to withhold the truth about past and ongoing abuses, information relating to these abuses will continue to find its way into the public domain,” the report states.
“At the same time, while US courts have closed their doors to victims of secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, legal challenges to foreign government participation in these operations are being heard in courts around the world.”
In his new book, A Secret History of Torture, award-winning journalist Ian Cobain details US & UK Complicity in a post-9/11 torture program. Cobain has reported for The Guardian on the new report, including that:
* In the post 9/11 world British nationals and former British residents, who had been apprehended in Afghanistan and elsewhere, were sent to Guantanamo. They were suspected–often wrongly–of terrorist activities or of having ties to terrorist groups. Many of these men would have to have been released if they were returned to the UK because of insufficient grounds for detention. Fearing a US backlash if they appeared to be less than cooperative in the War on Terror, the British government sent them to Guantanamo where they would be tortured. Senior British officials, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, were aware of the transfers and knew of the risk of torture.
* In January 2002 Foreign Secretary Jack Straw issued a secret telegram to the British embassy in Washington and embassies across the Middle East. No objections should be raised to the transfer of the British nationals to Guantanamo, he ordered, as this was “the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objectives.”
* Despite the UK’s public stance against torture, British intelligence agencies interrogated detainees who were being tortured at Guantanamo and other prisons. Sometimes they are alleged to have taken part in the torture themselves.”
* Britain played a key role in the US’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which suspected terrorists were transported to and from secret prisons in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Britain secretly offered logistical support that included US planes making frequent stopovers at British airports en route to clandestine CIA prisons, where they would be tortured. Between 2001-2005 aircraft operated by the CIA used UK airports at least 210 times.
The above list are only a few assertions made in A SECRET HISTORY OF TORTURE (Counterpoint Press, December 2012, Trade Cloth) by Cobain.
In his explosive new book Cobain offers a never-before-told account of British and US complicity in torture. He also details the shadowy history of a UK torture program that quietly emerged alongside public avowals that the United Kingdom does not “participate in, solicit, encourage or condone” torture.
