US Assurances to UK Govt on Rendition Flights A Load Of Garbage

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Thursday February 21, 2008 21:50

by .

Now Greenie Yesmen: Ask the question? Did or Does the CIA have an office at Shannon?

The United States did not begin seeking permission from governments before using their airspace and facilities for rendition until after the 2002 flights in question, according to a State Department official.

WASHINGTON (AP) — CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged Thursday that two rendition flights carrying terror suspects refueled on British territory, despite repeated U.S. assurances that none of the secret flights since the Sept. 11 attacks had used British airspace or soil.

Hayden told agency employees that information previously provided to the British "turned out to be wrong."

The spy agency reviewed rendition records late last year and discovered that in 2002 the CIA had in fact refueled two separate planes, each carrying a terror suspect, on Diego Garcia, a British island territory in the Indian Ocean.

"The refueling, conducted more than five years ago, lasted just a short time. But it happened. That we found this mistake ourselves, and that we brought it to the attention of the British government, in no way changes or excuses the reality that we were in the wrong. An important part of intelligence work, inherently urgent, complex, and uncertain, is to take responsibility for errors and to learn from them," Hayden stated in the message obtained by The Associated Press.

Hayden said neither man was tortured and denied there has ever been a holding facility for CIA prisoners on Diego Garcia. Both men remained on their respective planes during the brief stops, according to a U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Hayden delivered the news to the British government last weekend on a previously scheduled trip to London.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced the rendition flights earlier Thursday. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he "shared the disappointment that everybody has" about the stops, and that it was important to ensure they would not happen again.

The State Department's top lawyer, John Bellinger, flew to London overnight to deal with potential diplomatic and political fallout, according to a senior State Department
official.

One of the two prisoners is now jailed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and the other was released to his home country, where he has since been freed by that government, the U.S. intelligence official said.

The CIA didn't interrogate or imprison either man, according to the official. In this case, the CIA only moved the two men from one country to another.

The CIA has held and interrogated fewer than 100 prisoners in its detention program, using "enhanced" or harsh interrogation techniques on about a third of them, Hayden has told Congress.

The rendition program secretly transfers alleged terrorists from one country to another without formal extradition proceedings. It can involve moving prisoners to the custody of governments where harsh interrogation techniques, including torture, are known to be used. The U.S. government insists it does not move prisoners to third countries without assurances that torture will not be used.

The British government had previously insisted it had no evidence to support allegations that Britain had been involved in rendition.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in 2005 that the United States respects the sovereignty of foreign countries when conducting intelligence operations within their borders, suggesting that the CIA conducts rendition flights with the permission of the governments involved.

In a Dec. 6, 2005, interview with Sky News from Berlin, Rice publicly sidestepped a question about whether British airports or airspace were being used in rendition, and whether the British government was aware of it.

"We have obligations under our international conventions and we are respecting the sovereignty of our allies," she said. "We are not using the airspace or the airports of any of our partners for activities that would lead renditions to torture. We don't send people to be tortured."

The United States did not begin seeking permission from governments before using their airspace and facilities for rendition until after the 2002 flights in question, according to a State Department official.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday that Rice spoke to Miliband about "the administrative error" on Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, even with the best intentions, unfortunately, even with the most rigorous searches and, unfortunately, with good technology, sometimes administrative errors occur and this was the case," McCormack said. "We regret that there was an error in initially providing inaccurate information to a good friend and ally."

McCormack said the review last year was "self-generated."

A U.S. intelligence official said the review was prompted by fresh allegations in the press last fall that Diego Garcia was being used as a secret detention site.

"We, in taking a look in particular at the issue of Diego Garcia, asked ourselves a few questions and as a result generated this search," he said.

Gordon Johndroe, National Security Council spokesman for President Bush, said the incident was "unfortunate" but will not damage U.S.-British cooperation.

"Mistakes were made in the reporting of the information," he said. "But we will continue to have a good counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and United Kingdom."

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.

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Comments (4 of 4)

An assurance

by Seán Ryan

Fri Feb 22, 2008 09:51

Very good article.

Brown has apologised to his electorate and Condoleeza Rice has offered her regrets for the mistaken assurances given to the US’s staunchest allies.

That’s okay so…

But wait a minute… We’ve had assurances too. We most certainly are aiding in the genocide effort but we do not offer anywhere near as much support as the British. Not to worry though, Bertie’s had ‘checks’ done and the most he’s come up with were some golfers. Of course these ‘checks’ did not actually include boarding a singular aircraft, they happened after the fact and involved assurances from the US.

Shall we too be subjected to apologies from Bertie Ahern and have a casual insult tossed our way from Condoleeza Rice: “Oops - sorry ’bout the mistaken assurances.” Probably not. Even if we were to receive this much, that’d be the end of it as assurances have no legal commitment attached and are basically, in a legal sense, not worth the paper they’re written on. As far as I’m concerned and indeed convinced, this has been the idea all along.

However, I also believe that the Irish are not so gullible. Bertie and Co. have never been without legal advice and must have assuredly been aware that assurances have no legal comeback. They were most assuredly turning a blind eye to the comings and goings into and out of Irish airports and airspace.

Most rational people believe that Bertie is in trouble with the Mahon Tribunal. Some of us believe that that’s the least of his worries.

Links:

British Rendition Flights: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7256587.stm
Report of Oireachtas Committee Debate on Extraordinary Rendition: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85567
Peace Vigil at Shannon Airport: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86307
Danish TV documentary details Greenland's role in CIA abductions: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86069
Rendition Planes Land at Shannon, Dublin, Sligo, Cork and Knock: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85222

Anti-War Events in Next Few Weeks - and our response to the whingers

by MichaelY - iawm

Fri Feb 22, 2008 12:24

Hi Sean,

Good article and excellent response above. As 10,000 Turkish troops enter Iraq/Kurdish territory a bit of information on our events to protest:

1. STREET STALLS
2. MEETINGS AND SCREENINGS
3. NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION

5th Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
- End War, Occupation, Torture and Irish Complicity
- US Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan
-Turkish troops out of Iraq
- Don't Attack Iran
- US military and Torture Flights out of Shannon
- Justice for Palestine

1. STREET STALLS
Every Saturday at 2.30pm - 4.00pm at Bank of Ireland, College Green in Dublin.
For updated details contact;
Mark Price; 086 3454332
Marnie Holborrow; 087 9889244

If you are against war and torture come along and help us with this stall every Saturday.

2. MEETINGS AND SCREENINGS

Saturday 23 February, 11.00am, Savoy Cinema, O Connell St., Dublin 1.
'BATTLE FOR HADITHA’; being screened as part of Dublin International Film Festival. This is not an official IAWM event but all members of IAWM are invited to attend. The IAWM will be leafleting the event outside.

Synopsis; (Piers Handling, Toronto Film Festival Programme)
Iraq is front and centre in many films in recent years, none more so than this harrowing new work by documentarian Nick Broomfield. The film is a highly realistic, vérité-like fictional rendering of an incident that took place in the village of Haditha, a hotbed in the middle of the Sunni Triangle where much of the insurgency has taken place. In November 2005, a roadside IED (Improvised Explosive Device) killed one US Marine and wounded two others. Enraged fellow Marines exacted revenge by killing twenty-four Iraqis: men, women and children. Four Marines were subsequently charged with murder.

In Battle for Haditha, Broomfield sets out to recreate the incident, imagining the circumstances that provoked the violence and led to the massacre. Two realities, two cultures, two groups of men slowly intersect. The film starts innocuously enough, when we are introduced to American soldiers, streaking across the desert in their armoured Humvees. They drop into a local store to check out DVDs (!) and find themselves talking to a young male clerk whose fate is soon to be entwined with their own. Broomfield then switches his focus to the Iraqi reality, as two men pile into the back of a pickup truck for a quick lesson in the primitive mechanics of the IED. He meticulously details the daily routines of the two sides, foreign and local, juxtaposing the monotony of patrols with the waiting game played by the bombers. What we see is not a simple black-and-white reality. Ordinary people in extraordinary situations do violent and unexpected things.

Broomfield walks a tightrope, somehow managing to step back from the emotions of the event to find compassion and humanity – and their opposites – on both sides. At the same time, he shows the mind-numbing, brutal results of the violence that is unleashed. The film grimly renders the harsh realities of this quagmire where innocent civilians, simply trying to get by, are caught in the crossfire, victims of Americans who kick down their doors, and Iraqis who do the same thing. Broomfield forces us to follow him down this road through the sheer power of his imagery. We are spellbound: this is what it must be like to be there.

Monday 11 - Friday 29 February, Galway
Student members of GALWAY ALLIANCE AGAINST WAR (GAAW) will be holding 3 documentary/talk nights. These will include:

Documentary: The Road to Guantanamo.

Short: The Spanish journalist killed in the Palestine Hotel, Baghdad.
Followed by a debate on freedom of speech in war.

Short: The Iraqi Oil Workers Union tour of USA with the US Labour movement (the resistance of the Iraqis to privatization)

Dave Lippman dvd: trailer to his show, plus his tour of Palestine.

For more information contact [email protected]

Tuesday 04 March - GAAW Public Meeting:
5th ANNIVERSARY OF US INVASION ON IRAQ, "WORLD AT WAR"
Speaker; Denis Halliday (Former UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq)
Time/Venue TBC
more information from: [email protected]

Thursday 06 MARCH, Main Theatre, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.
Public Meeting;5th ANNIVERSARY OF US INVASION OF IRAQ, WORLD AGAINST WAR
Speakers; Denis Halliday, (Former UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq), Haifa Zangana (Iraqi Writer and Activist) and Richard Boyd Barrett (Chair IAWM)

Saturday 07 March, 8.00pm, Victoria Hotel, Patrick St., Cork.
Public Meeting; 5th ANNIVERSARY OF US INVASION, WORLD AGAINST WAR
Speakers; Denis Halliday (Former UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq) and IAWM Speaker

3. NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION
Saturday 15 March, WORLD AGAINST WAR Global Day of Action
Assemble 1.00pm, Parnell Sq., Dublin 1. Further info to follow later.

======================================================================
To set-up a standing order with the Irish-Anti War Movement please go
to the following link http://www.irishantiwar.org/files/standing-order-form.doc
fill in the form and post to the Irish Anti-War Movement P.O. Box 9260 Dublin 1.

To unsubscribe from this mailing list send a message to
[email protected] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject
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To contact the webmaster send an email to [email protected] or ring +353 0 878289243

Irish Anti-War Movement
Tel (fixed) 353 (0) 1 8727912,
Tel (mobile) 353 (0) 87 6329511

Postal Address
Irish Anti-War Movement
PO Box 9260
Dublin 1

A birt of info

Hammered by the Irish.

by Conor Cregan - Cosantoiri Siochana

Fri Feb 22, 2008 12:50

I just heard Bertie Ahern released a statement last night. One point he makes is that no state has a regime of search CIA planes. This is course a lie as Iceland now searches all international planes for this reason.

I was on the local radio station this morning debating with a FF hack. Again he took out the old gem of what is the alternative for Shannon Airport now that it is in serious financial trouble. He was given the last word and made the mistake of asking this question again. I drove the nail home and he was hammered when I reminded him that Fianna Fail are the reason that Shannon Airport is in trouble.

Please be reminded that we are hosting a Peace Vigil at Shannon Airport Sunday 23th March at 5pm to mark the anniversary of the American War in Iraq.

Guantanamo Bay celebrates its birthday today. the USA annexed it 105 years ago.

by trivia

Sat Feb 23, 2008 08:53

The state of Cuba still regards the US Naval base as an illegal presence as it violates Article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which declares a treaty void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of international law which was the case with the Cuban-American Treaty signed on February 16, 1903 by the first President of Cuba, Tomás Estrada Palma, and on February 23, 1903 by the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. The former was a puppet & the latter came to power after the anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated the imperialist president William Mc Kinley who had annexed the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, as well as Hawaii, and set up a protectorate over Cuba. Teddy Roosevelt had all teddy bears named after him as a mark of appreciation for how particularly evil his brand of WASP American racism was.

The first prisoners arrived in camp Delta on January 11th 2002.
They have had orange jumpsuits named after them.

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US Assurances to UK Govt on Rendition Flights A Load Of Garbage

Comments (4 of 4)