Turning to the dark side

As the latest snoop revelations show, the security apparatus knows no limits ... How Australia played a role in secret detention and extraordinary rendition ... Globalizing Terror ... The case of Khaled El-Masri ... The ECHR tells a harrowing story of prisoner abuse ... From Stephen Keim & Salwa Marsh 

Cheney: "any means at our disposal"

WHEN United States Vice President, Richard Cheney, spoke on September 16, 2001 of turning to the dark side and using any means at the United States' disposal to achieve its objective of winning the war on terror, one of the things he meant was that the Bush administration would act with disregard for the rule of law and its obligations under international human rights law.

While expectations of the Bush administration, and of Cheney himself, were somewhat low in this regard, few would have expected that over 50 countries, including Australia, would embrace and join the Bush administration's descent into lawlessness.

Two important documents have become available that demonstrate this fact.

The first is a report which documents the grand sweep of extraordinary rendition by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Despite the secrecy and denial that still surrounds these actions, the Open Society Justice Initiative, in its report Globalizing Terror - CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition, fastidiously itemises precisely  how 54 countries, many of whom pride themselves on their devotion to the rule of law, have aided and assisted CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition and the torture and inhuman treatment that is at its core.  

The second is the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in a case brought by German national, Khaled El-Masri, against the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The decision provides the reader with a shocking insight into one man's experience of kidnap and torture at the hands of the western world.

It's a useful starting point for a discussion of these practices. 

On December 31, 2003 El-Masri, travelling from Ulm in West Germany, arrived at Tabanovce the border post between Serbia and Macedonia, at around 3pm.

He was in the process of taking "a short vacation and some time off from a stressful home environment". 

Officials at the border were suspicious of the validity of his recently issued German passport.

His belongings were searched and he was questioned until 10pm about potential ties with several Islamic organisations.

At which point armed men in civilian clothes transported El-Masri to the Skopsi Merak Hotel in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. 

He was kept incommunicado in the hotel for the next 23 days where he was under constant surveillance. He was interrogated, repeatedly.

He was threatened with a gun when he tried to leave. After seven days, his captors offered him a deal - his return to Germany, but only if he confessed to being a member of Al-Qaeda. 

On January 23, 2004, handcuffed and blindfolded, El-Masri was put in a car and taken to Skopje Airport.

He was handed to CIA agents, who told him that he would be examined by doctors before returning to Germany. 

Instead, he was beaten severely from all sides. His clothes were sliced from his body. His underwear was removed. He was thrown to the floor. He was anally raped with an object. 

Then he was bound, placed in a nappy and dressed. A bag was placed on his head and his ankles and wrists were chained.

His senses were taken away from him. He was blindfolded and hooded and his hearing was impaired by earmuffs. He was marched to a waiting aircraft. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He couldn't hear.

Khalid El-Masry: wrong man tortured

He was secured to the side of the aircraft. He was injected twice. An anesthetic was administered over his nose.  He was unconscious for most of the flight. 

When the plane landed, El-Masri was immediately conscious of the heat outside, and he later concluded that he had been flown to Afghanistan.

He was driven, dragged from the vehicle and then beaten. He was left in a small, dirty, dark concrete cell with no bed. He had been taken to the "Salt Pit", a brick factory north of Kabul used by the CIA for interrogating suspects. 

El-Masri's immediate reception involved being slammed into walls and being kicked and beaten on the ground. His head and neck were stood on. His cell was filthy and a dirty military blanket substituted for a bed.

During interrogations, he was threatened, insulted, pushed and yelled at.

After six weeks, the prisoner commenced a hunger strike. On the 37th day, he was force fed with a nasal tube, which led to illness and severe pain.

It was then that he saw a doctor for the first time and received some medication. But he could not stand for several days.  

Eventually, nearly five months after arriving at Tavanovce, El-Masri's nightmare went into reverse. On May 28, 2004, he was again blindfolded and handcuffed and put on another plane, chained to his seat.

Again, he was not told where he was when the aircraft landed.

Eventually, he was taken from a car and his blindfold and handcuffs removed.

His belongings and passport were returned to him. He was told to walk down a path and not to look back. It was dark and the road was deserted. He believed he would be shot in the back and without warning. 

El-Masri turned a corner and saw three armed men. They asked for his passport. He was near the Albanian border. He was presented to a senior officer who remarked that he looked like a terrorist. He was taken to the Airport in Tirana and put on a plane to Germany. 

The Macedonian government has consistently denied El-Masri's version of events. However, the European Court of Human Rights accepted his evidence supported, as it is, by a variety of corroborating material, including seismic records from Afghanistan, a molecular analysis of the prisoner's hair chemistry, the available evidence of classic CIA rendition methodology and partially self-serving admissions by a retired Macedonian government official. 

The court went on to find that Macedonia had breached the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular Articles 3 (prohibition on torture), 5 (right to life and liberty), 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and 13 (right to an effective remedy).

Further, the court found:

"Macedonia's responsibility ... is engaged with regard to the applicant's transfer into the custody of the United States authorities despite the existence of a real risk that he would be subjected to further treatment contrary to Article 3 of the Convention." 

Macedonia's refusal to take responsibility is far from unique.

Its willingness to be part of a highly organised betrayal of human rights obligations that have been almost universally accepted is shared by many countries, including those that proudly trumpet their adherence to the rule of law.

These countries include Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia. 

Globalizing Terror identifies 54 countries as having participated in CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition.

Australia is identified for its role in the rendition and torture of Mamdouh Habib.

Australia's failures concerning David Hicks are not documented in this report, possibly because other defence agencies and not the CIA were responsible for his mistreatment.

Australia did nothing to prevent Mamdouh Habib's mistreatment in custody in Pakistan, his extraordinary rendition to Egypt and his subsequent detention in Guantanamo Bay.

According to the Globalizing Terror: 

"Australian officials acknowledged that they hoped to garner enough information from the United States to prosecute him, with one official stating, 'all [the Americans] had was that he was caught on the bus, and whatever he gave up under extreme circumstances in Egypt'."

There is credible evidence that Australian officials were present to see Habib being tortured. 

Mamdouh Habib was released without charge in 2005 and has subsequently pursued civil litigation against the Australian government.

The litigation resulted in a favourable settlement for Habib. The result, however, has prevented Australia's involvement in his rendition and torture from being aired in open court. 

Several things continue to surprise after a harrowing journey through the two reports.

First, the debate over acceptable tactics in the fight against international terrorism continues to be framed as a battle between rights and results. In practical terms, this is nonsense given the sheer volume of  evidence against the effectiveness of torture as an interrogation tool.

Secondly, the liberal west continues to undermine the very values it is purporting to protect by adopting such tactics. It is the United States, the friend of freedom, which orchestrated extraordinary rendition with all its lawlessness. Almost no one country, not even Australia or the UK, can honestly claim to have chosen our most important values over an ally's tap on the shoulder.

The final surprise is the friends we are prepared to keep. The report reveals that the United States sent at least 11 suspects to Gadhafi's Libya to be tortured. It shows that the United Kingdom and other countries were prepared to cooperate to ensure that a suspect ended up in in the hands of Gadhafi's agents in Libya. Australia, in its turn, was happy to associate with the murderers of Mubarak's Egypt rather than an Australian citizen.

Human rights are indispensable in the fight against terrorism. When we abandon them, we become, and have become, agents of terror.

It is time that we renounced all forms of terror. These dirty practices must be investigated, reviewed, acknowledged and rejected. 

Stephen Keim and Salwa Marsh