U.S. defends abductions, torture, secret prisons

The bottom line to all of this is that all of it is patently illegal by international law. Now Bush and Rice are attempting to talk around the issues, supported a bit also by many other countries who talk softly about this, since their own countries were used for in and out going flights, and that the U.S. has told them to stay quiet. The following article has a lot of information.


The Bush administration faced a new barrage of questions and criticism Tuesday over the US policy of kidnapping and torturing suspects in the so-called “war on terror.” One victim of the illegal US practice of “rendition” filed suit against the US government in a Washington-area federal court, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced mounting political controversy in the course of her European trip.

The suit is the first to challenge the practice of rendition as a violation of US and international law.

Appearing by satellite hookup from Germany, al-Masri spoke at the ACLU news conference announcing the suit. “I want to know why they did this to me and how it ever came about,” he said, speaking through an interpreter

From Germany, Rice traveled to Romania to sign an agreement that will give the United States its first military base in a former Soviet bloc country. The facility, Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, is believed to be the site of the one of the secret CIA prisons, according to reports by several human rights organizations.

Polish officials denied reports that Szymany Airport has been the site of a secret CIA prison. At the same time, officials of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia would not comment on the ABC report that the CIA had shifted prisoners to North Africa.

Amnesty International announced Monday that it had obtained the flight logs of six planes that have been used in CIA renditions, making 800 flights in and out of European airspace. Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said the logs were “irrefutable proof that the United States is ‘disappearing’ people into secret facilities where they are held incommunicado without charge, trial, or access to the outside world.”

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