In the face of growing anger across the continent over the US's treatment of detainees, Condoleezza Rice's European tour was overshadowed by allegations of secret CIA camps. Tamam Ahmed Jama from London reports When Condoleezza Rice, United States secretary of state, embarked on a European tour earlier this month, she perhaps didn't expect her trip to be overshadowed by a scandal about the presence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. The allegations, first published by The Washington Post ahead of Rice's trip, caused a furore in European countries. There were also reports that top Al-Qaeda suspects held in Soviet-era bases in Eastern Europe were hurriedly moved to secret locations in the North African desert ahead of Rice's arrival in Europe. Rice avoided an outright denial of the existence of CIA-operated secret facilities, in Europe or elsewhere, but insisted in an attempt to reassure sceptical Europe that the US does not practise or condone torture. "There are reports of CIA sources telling journalists that these secret detention facilities exist in Europe," said Katherine Newell Bierman, counter-terrorism counsel for the US Programme at Human Rights Watch. "The US did admit that not all of its detainees are known to the International Committee of the Red Cross." Under international law, the ICRC should be allowed access to prisoners of war to check whether abuse is taking place. Detainees held in secret prisons and barred from contact with the outside world are more vulnerable to abuse, Bierman added. "Incommunicado detention is considered to be a gateway to abuse because nobody even knows that you are being detained," he said. "If there is a complete control over you and no judicial oversight, then it is very easy for them to abuse you. And that is exactly what we believe is happening in these secret detention facilities." The torture of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan has left observers fearing that detainees in secret locations may face worse abuses. "We know people in other locations are subjected to worse treatment because everyone who has come out of these other locations has told us about it; every single report that has come out has been far worse than what happens in Guantanamo Bay," said Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer who represents 40 Guantanamo Bay detainees and who acts as legal advisor to the London-based human rights organisation Reprieve. American authorities have persistently denied that the US condones torture, but the Bush administration has been accused of redefining torture to engage in dubious practices while claiming to be complying with international law. For instance, the head of CIA, Porter Goss, has said that the organisation does not use torture, but it is known that the CIA employs techniques that others, especially in Europe, regard as torture. Last month, the American ABC News network listed six so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorised by the CIA. These highly controversial methods, which American officials say are intended to "break" the detainees, include forcing shackled prisoners to stand for 40 hours and more, often in cold, damp cells. The most controversial of these methods is water-boarding. The technique dates back to the Spanish Inquisition and was used by dictatorships in Latin America, where it was known as "submarino", in the 1970s and 1980s. It involves binding prisoners to a board and dipping or immersing them in water to make them believe that they are suffocating or drowning. The technique is widely considered a form of torture. Previous US administrations had outlawed similar techniques. "It is a mock execution which is clearly prohibited under international law and CIA officials are mischaracterising that technique, calling it an 'enhanced interrogation technique' and not torture," Bierman said. Smith said it is shameful that people still dispute what constitutes torture and how much pain could be inflicted on a person before it amounts to torture. "We should get away from this whole pussy- footing around about torture; it is illegal to coerce and abuse prisoners," he said. "The last time that torture was legal in Britain was 1640. For us to even be holding this debate today is silly. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. So Britain, Europe and every other civilised country in the world need to tell America we are not to going to put up with rogue regimes like the Bush administration." One of Smith's clients, Binyam Mohamed Al-Habashi, an Ethiopian-born resident in Britain, was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002 and handed over to US soldiers, who held him in Afghanistan for some time before sending him to Morocco where he was tortured for 14 months. According to Al-Habashi's testimony, which his lawyer has obtained, interrogators subjected him to prolonged beatings. He was shackled and burnt, and interrogators slashed his groin with razors. He was also subjected to psychological abuse by interrogators who threatened to "change [his] brain." Al-Habashi was eventually moved to Guantanamo Bay, where he is currently held. Smith said interrogators led Al-Habashi into confessing he had dinner with Al-Qaeda leaders, including Khaled Shayk Mohamed and Abu Zubaydeh on 3 April, 2000. "That is ludicrous: Abu Zubaydeh was in US custody by then." Smith said. "It's nonsense, but it is not surprising that Binyam said that. It is a confession made at the tip of a razor blade." On 16 December, the US Senate passed legislation which would prohibit "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment". President . Bush had threatened to veto the legislation, but he apparently relented in the face of strong bi- partisan support for the legislation. An overwhelming number of US senators, 90 to nine, had endorsed the measure, which could lead to outlawing most, if not all, of the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques". Senator John McCain -- who was tortured when he was a POW in Vietnam -- introduced the legislation. He is an outspoken critic of the ill- treatment of detainees in the war on terror. "We should not torture or inhumanely treat terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms our war effort," he told Newsweek. "In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear -- if he believes it will relieve his suffering." Another controversial issue that dogged Rice during her recent visit to Europe is a practice known as "extraordinary rendition", which involves taking suspects captured in one country to another for interrogation. This has created strong public opposition in Europe, because unlike in the case of legal extradition -- where certain guarantees are generally made to ensure due process for the person being handed over -- "extraordinary rendition" involves taking people to places where they could face torture. The practice is illegal under international law, but American authorities say it is essential for intelligence gathering for the war on terror. Over the past few weeks, there has been a flood of reports that hundreds of CIA-operated flights have used European airspace and airfields to transport terror suspects en route to secret camps where they could be tortured. In the UK, it recently emerged that more than 400 CIA-chartered flights suspected of carrying terror suspects passed through 18 British airports. The German government says it has a list of more than 400 over-flights and landings of planes suspected of being used by the CIA. Several other European countries have also reported unmarked planes allegedly used by the CIA to transport suspects. After telling MPs that the practice of extraordinary rendition has been a US policy for years, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair came under fire last week and was challenged to say how long he had known this and whether he gave tacit British approval. Pressed in parliament on his apparent backing of the controversial US policy Blair said: "some of these people are highly dangerous, some of them can provide information that is of absolutely fundamental importance in preventing terrorism. There should of course be proper treatment of anyone detained." Many in the UK believe that the British government should distance itself from the dubious practices of the Bush administration. "If we become an accomplice to criminal activities by the American government, then we are liable too," Smith said. In his capacity as chair of the EU foreign affairs ministers, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has asked Rice for clarifications on the alleged CIA secret camps and the suspicious CIA planes using European airspace and airbases. The EU and scores of individual countries, including Germany, Sweden, Spain and Poland, have launched investigations into the matter. Under intense media questioning, Rice announced before leaving Europe that the provisions of the UN Convention against Torture would now apply to CIA agents both in America and abroad. Rice's statement may mark a shift from the US's position that the Convention against Torture does not apply to overseas CIA investigations. Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has warned that the ban on torture, a cornerstone of the human rights edifice, is becoming a casualty of the war on terror.
