A staggering map of the 54 countries that reportedly participated in the CIA’s rendition program

[JonLP24]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484

Syria, Iran WTF?

After Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA launched a program of "extraordinary rendition" to handle terrorism suspects. The agency's problem, as it saw it, was that it wanted to detain and interrogate foreign suspects without bringing them to the United States or charging them with any crimes. Their solution was to secretly move a suspect to another country. Sometimes that meant a secret CIA prison in places such as Thailand or Romania, where the CIA would interrogate him. Sometimes it meant handing him over to a sympathetic government, some of them quite nasty, to conduct its own "interrogation."

The CIA's extraordinary rendition program is over, but its scope is still shrouded in some mystery. A just-out report, released by the Open Society Foundation, sheds new light on its shocking scale. According to the report, 54 foreign governments somehow collaborated in the program. Some of those governments are brutal dictatorships, and a few are outright U.S. adversaries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/05/a-staggering-map-of-the-54-countries-that-reportedly-participated-in-the-cias-rendition-program/

[Fumesucker]

1. Russia didn't participate?

Clearly they are pro-terrorist and do not love freedom.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Thank goodness some more folks are waking up to the fact that Russia is not the great enemy, lies are.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Truly an exceptional nation. "Loving" America unconditionally is why this happens.

[merrily]

4. A list of nations that are party to the UN Convention Against Torture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_against_Torture

[madokie]

5. I'm not so sure I can believe this

It is the washington post after all. Not the best source of facts out there. Sound, or reads like its a cover your ass by saying there was a lot of countries in on this travesty of justice. A planted story by those who have something gain by this. I don't buy it

[JonLP24]

7. The source is the Open Society Foundation

216 pages if you feel like sifting through 'em

http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/globalizing-torture-20120205.pdf

On edit -- It has long been called "torture by proxy", you hand them over to countries who'd love nothing more to "interrogate" them.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. I don't buy the comment that the program is over...n/t

[malaise]

6. Bravo South and Central America and the Caribbean

Bravo Russia, China, India and the others not responsible for the breakdown of human rights on this planet.

So much for the civilized West.

[BB1]

8. Hey, we're not on the map!

But we (The Netherlands) should be. There is evidence that Dutch Intelligence operators helped transfer unidentified subjects to black sites in Poland, via Schiphol (Amsterdam) airport.
No link - I'll search for it.

[DeSwiss]

9. How appropriate they used red ink.

The fact that no one but the Canadians {sigh} were involved on this side of the planet is the most encouraging thing about the map.

- If you're thinking about relocating to another country, this is the map to start with......

K&R

[JonLP24]

10. The most troubling part is the Syria

The #1 Human rights violator of 2014 was a top destination of the Assad regime who would love nothing more to "interrogate"

The most common destinations for rendered suspects are Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Jordan, all of which have been cited for human-rights violations by the State Department, and are known to torture suspects. To justify sending detainees to these countries, the Administration appears to be relying on a very fine reading of an imprecise clause in the United Nations Convention Against Torture (which the U.S. ratified in 1994), requiring “substantial grounds for believing” that a detainee will be tortured abroad. Martin Lederman, a lawyer who left the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2002, after eight years, says, “The Convention only applies when you know a suspect is more likely than not to be tortured, but what if you kind of know? That’s not enough. So there are ways to get around it.”

Administration officials declined to discuss the rendition program. But Rohan Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan expert on terrorist interrogations who has consulted with several intelligence agencies, argued that rough tactics “can save hundreds of lives.” He said, “When you capture a terrorist, he may know when the next operation will be staged, so it may be necessary to put a detainee under physical or psychological pressure. I disagree with physical torture, but sometimes the threat of it must be used.”

Rendition is just one element of the Administration’s New Paradigm. The C.I.A. itself is holding dozens of “high value” terrorist suspects outside of the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., in addition to the estimated five hundred and fifty detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Administration confirmed the identities of at least ten of these suspects to the 9/11 Commission—including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top Al Qaeda operative, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a chief planner of the September 11th attacks—but refused to allow commission members to interview the men, and would not say where they were being held. Reports have suggested that C.I.A. prisons are being operated in Thailand, Qatar, and Afghanistan, among other countries. At the request of the C.I.A., Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally ordered that a prisoner in Iraq be hidden from Red Cross officials for several months, and Army General Paul Kern told Congress that the C.I.A. may have hidden up to a hundred detainees. The Geneva Conventions of 1949, which established norms on the treatment of soldiers and civilians captured in war, require the prompt registration of detainees, so that their treatment can be monitored, but the Administration argues that Al Qaeda members and supporters, who are not part of a state-sponsored military, are not covered by the Conventions.

The Bush Administration’s departure from international norms has been justified in intellectual terms by élite lawyers like Gonzales, who is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Gonzales, the new Attorney General, argued during his confirmation proceedings that the U.N. Convention Against Torture’s ban on “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” of terrorist suspects does not apply to American interrogations of foreigners overseas. Perhaps surprisingly, the fiercest internal resistance to this thinking has come from people who have been directly involved in interrogation, including veteran F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents. Their concerns are as much practical as ideological. Years of experience in interrogation have led them to doubt the effectiveness of physical coercion as a means of extracting reliable information. They also warn that the Bush Administration, having taken so many prisoners outside the realm of the law, may not be able to bring them back in. By holding detainees indefinitely, without counsel, without charges of wrongdoing, and under circumstances that could, in legal parlance, “shock the conscience” of a court, the Administration has jeopardized its chances of convicting hundreds of suspected terrorists, or even of using them as witnesses in almost any court in the world.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/outsourcing-torture

No wonder people become radicalized.

[heaven05]

11. no surprise

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. The friend of my enemy is my friend and the enemy of my friend is my friend or...never mind.