THE NEW BOOM INDUSTRY: TORTURE With CIA 'extraordinary rendition'

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Dec 4, 2005 | by Neil Mackay

Poland and Romania are also rumoured to be home to "black site" secret CIA prisons where suspects are held completely incommunicado. At least 26 "ghost detainees" are held in secret sites outside the USA. Vice President Dick Cheney even recently said he wanted the CIA to be exempt from a proposed ban on the torture of terrorist suspects in US custody.

The UN and the Council of Europe recently said that the behaviour of the western powers - principally the USA and the UK - was undermining democracy, making the world a more dangerous place and the way the war on terror has been prosecuted is now the biggest threat to the rule of law and human rights since the rise of Nazi Germany.

Alvaro Gils-Robles, the Council of Europe's commissioner on human rights, said: "We display a lack of confidence in our values before those who are trying to undermine them. Respecting democracy and human rights does not make you vulnerable to terrorism. Democracy cannot be defended by resorting to the barbarism of torture. We can't violate democracy in the name of democracy."

NEED TO KNOW

THE FACTS The controversy over America's use of rendition flights, (transferring prisoners to countries where legal restrictions on the treatment of prisoners differ), has highlighted concerns over the use of torture by Western powers in response to the threat of terrorism.

BACKGROUND The flights are used by the CIA to ferry captured terror suspects to places such as Egypt and Morocco, which routinely use torture, for interrogation. There has been intensifying criticism from European governments, and foreign secretary Jack Straw last week became the first British minister to publicly question the use of rendition flights by formally writing to Condoleezza Rice, his US counterpart.

FACTS & FIGURES

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, states that nobody shall be subjected to torture, or cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment.

Since then a number of international treaties have regulated the use of torture, including the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.

Despite this, it is estimated that torture is still practised in twothirds of the world's nations.

In recent years Amnesty International has regularly received reports of torture or ill-treatment in over 100 countries each year.

Research from Human Rights Watch has found that many countries including China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Turkey and Uganda continue to brutalise detainees or suspects.

As well as terror suspects, common targets include suspected rebels, political opponents or critics of government, members of religious minorities and gay people.

It is estimated that between 5-per cent and 35-per cent of the world's refugees have experienced torture.

Torture may include both physical methods, such as beatings, burnings and electric shocks and psychological methods, such as sensory deprivation and mock executions.