Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY [LINK | Article]
Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
Engility Holdings Inc Chantilly, Virginia, USA
US government defence contractor
lawsuit: conspiring to torture detainees
at: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
Paid $5.28 million
to 71 former inmates held Abu Ghraib
(& at otherUS-run detention sites)
between 2003 and 2007
L-3 Services Inc.
(now an Engility subsidiary) provided translators to US military in Iraq
over 6,000 translators in Iraq (at $450 million per annum contract)
CACI International Inc.
Arlington, Virginia, USA
(another US government defence contractor)
case expected to go on trial
each of the 71 Iraqis received a portion
Torture - Iraq
mock execution (trigger pulling)
wall slammed until unconscious
stripped, bound (chain) & hooded, threatened with rape
forced to consume so much water, vomited blood
several captives raped & beaten
kept naked extended periods of time
2003 to 2006 USA Defence Department
paid $30.9 million to Iraqi & Afghan civilians
re killings, injuries, property damage
due to US or coalition forces' military actions
US government is immune from lawsuits
stemming from combatant activities of the military at war
2013 - Times of Israel:
"Courts are still sorting out whether contractors in a war zone should be accorded legal immunity from being sued, just as the government is immune."
In its defense four years ago against the lawsuit, L-3 said the fact that the claims in the case “cannot be brought against the government means that they also cannot be brought against L-3.”
“No court in the United States has allowed aliens — detained on the battlefield or in the course of postwar occupation and military operations by the US military — to seek damages for their detention,” the company told the federal court four years ago. “Yet these plaintiffs bring claims seeking money damages for their detention and treatment while in the custody of the US military in the midst of a belligerent occupation in Iraq.”
Allowing the case to proceed “would require a wholly unprecedented injection of the judiciary into wartime military operations and occupation conduct against the local population, in particular the conditions of confinement and interrogation for intelligence gathering,” L-3 added.
How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war
By Ian Cobain
Published: 09:34 EST, 27 October 2012 | Updated: 09:35 EST, 27 October 2012
The German SS officer was fighting to save himself from the gallows for a terrible war crime and might say anything to escape the noose. But Fritz Knöchleinwas not lying in 1946 when he claimed that, in captivity in London, he had been tortured by British soldiers to force a confession out of him.
Tortured by British soldiers? In captivity? In London? The idea seems incredible. Britain has a reputation as a nation that prides itself on its love of fair play and respect for the rule of law. We claim the moral high ground when it comes to human rights. We were among the first to sign the 1929 Geneva Convention on the humane treatment of prisoners of war.
Surely, you would think, the British avoid torture? But you would be wrong, as my research into what has gone on behind closed doors for decades shows.
It was in 2005 during my work as an investigative reporter that I came across a veiled mention of a World War II detention centre known as the London Cage. It took a number of Freedom Of Information requests to the Foreign Office before government files were reluctantly handed over.
From these, a sinister world unfolded — of a torture centre that the British military operated throughout the Forties, in complete secrecy, in the heart of one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in the capital.
Thousands of Germans passed through the unit that became known as the London Cage, where they were beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to assume stress positions for days at a time.
Some were told they were to be murdered and their bodies quietly buried. Others were threatened with unnecessary surgery carried out by people with no medical qualifications. Guards boasted that they were ‘the English Gestapo’.
The London Cage was part of a network of nine ‘cages’ around Britain run by the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS), which came under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Military Intelligence.
Three, at Doncaster, Kempton Park and Lingfield, were at hastily converted racecourses. Another was at the ground of Preston North End Football Club. Most were benignly run.
But prisoners thought to possess valuable information were whisked off to a top-secret unit in a row of grandiose Victorian villas in Kensington Palace Gardens, then (as now) one of the smartest locations in London.
Today, the tree-lined street a stone’s throw from Kensington Palace is home to ambassadors and billionaires, sultans and princes. Houses change hands for £50 million and more.
Yet it was here, seven decades ago, in five interrogation rooms, in cells and in the guardroom in numbers six, seven and eight Kensington Palace Gardens, that nine officers, assisted by a dozen NCOs, used whatever methods they thought necessary to squeeze information from suspects.
Of course, it is crucial to put these events into context. When the gloves first came off at Britain’s interrogation centres — the summer of 1940 — German forces were racing across France and the Low Countries, and Britain was fighting for its very survival. The stakes could not have been higher. [see: Dresden fire-bombings war crime for comparison -- "well over 250,000 -- possibly as many as a half a million -- persons" killed "within a 14-hour period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from 90,000 to 140,000" -- here]
In the following years, large parts of Britain’s cities were left in ruins, hundreds of thousands of service personnel and civilians died, and barely a day passed without evidence emerging of a new Nazi atrocity. Little wonder, perhaps, that it was felt acceptable for German prisoners to suffer in British interrogation centres. [I'm going to guess that the 'new Nazi atrocity' referred to, as if to justify allied war crimes, is a production of British and allied wartime propaganda, as well as the product of illegitimate 'confessions' obtained under torture.]
And it should also be said that whatever went on within their walls, it paled into insignificance compared with the horrors the Nazis visited on millions of prisoners. [And what of the Dresden genocide and what of the post-war atrocities visited upon millions of starved German civilians and German POWs deliberately murdered? Elements of this article sound like an apology for those that were much the same as their vilified German enemy, based articles and videos I've seen so far on the subject of allied crimes and atrocities.]
So, how can we be sure about the methods used at the London Cage? Because the man who ran it admitted as much — and was hushed up for half-a-century by an establishment fearful of the shame his story would bring on a Britain that had been fighting for honesty, decency and the rule of law.
That man was Colonel Alexander Scotland, an accepted master in techniques of interrogation. After the war, he wrote a candid account of his activities in his memoirs, in which he recalled how he would muse, on arriving at the Cage each morning: ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’
Because, he said, before going into detail: ‘If any German had any information we wanted, it was invariably extracted from him in the long run.’
As was customary, before publication Scotland submitted his manuscript to the War Office for clearance in 1954. Pandemonium erupted. All four copies were seized. All those who knew of its contents were silenced with threats of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.
What caused the greatest consternation was his admission that the horrors had continued after the war, when interrogators switched from extracting military intelligence to securing convictions for war crimes.
Of 3,573 prisoners who passed through Kensington Palace Gardens, more than 1,000 were persuaded to sign a confession or give a witness statement for use in war crimes prosecutions.
Fritz Knöchlein, a former lieutenant colonel in the Waffen SS, was one such case. He was suspected of ordering the machine-gunning of 124 British soldiers who surrendered at Le Paradis in northern France during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. His defence was that he was not even there.
At his trial, he claimed he had been tortured in the London Cage after the war. He was deprived of sleep for four days and nights after arriving in October 1946 and forced to walk in a tight circle for four hours while being kicked by a guard at each turn.
He was made to clean stairs and lavatories with a tiny rag, for days at a time, while buckets of water were poured over him. If he dared to rest, he was cudgelled. He was also forced to run in circles in the grounds of the house while carrying heavy logs and barrels. When he complained, the treatment simply got worse.
Nor was he the only one. He said men were repeatedly beaten about the face and had hair ripped from their heads. A fellow inmate begged to be killed because he couldn’t take any more brutality.
All Knöchlein’s accusations were ignored, however. He was found guilty and hanged.
Suspects in another high-profile war crime — the shooting of 50 RAF officers who broke out from a prison camp, Stalag Luft III, in what became known as the Great Escape — also passed through the Cage.
Of the 21 accused, 14 were hanged after a war-crimes trial in Hamburg. Many confessed only after being interrogated by Scotland and his men. In court, they protested that they had been starved, whipped and systematically beaten. Some said they had been menaced with red-hot pokers and ‘threatened with electrical devices’.
Scotland, of course, denied allegations of torture, going into the witness box at one trial after another to say his accusers were lying.
It was all the more surprising, then, that a few years later he was willing to come clean about the techniques he employed at the London Cage.
In his memoirs, he disclosed that a number of men were forced to incriminate themselves. A general was sentenced to death in 1946 after signing a confession at the Cage while, in Scotland’s words, ‘acutely depressed after the various examinations’.
A naval officer was convicted on the basis of a confession that Scotland said he had signed only after being‘subject to certain degrading duties’.
Scotland also acknowledged that one of the men accused of the ‘Great Escape’ murders went to the gallows even though he had confessed after he had — in Scotland’s own words — been ‘worked on psychologically’. At his trial, the man insisted he had been ‘worked on’ physically as well.
Others did not share Scotland’s eagerness to boast about what had gone on in Kensington Park Gardens. An MI5 legal adviser who read his manuscript concluded that Scotland and fellow interrogators had been guilty of a ‘clear breach’ of the Geneva Convention.
They could have faced war-crimes charges themselves for forcing prisoners to stand to attention for more than 24 hours at a time; forcing them to kneel while they were beaten about the head; threatening to have them shot; threatening one prisoner with an unnecessary appendix operation to be performed on him by another inmate with no medical qualifications.
Appalled by the embarrassment his manuscript would cause if it ever came out, the War Office and the Foreign Office both declared that it would never see the light of day.
Two years later, however, they were forced to strike a deal with him after he threatened to publish his book abroad. He was told he would never be allowed to recover his original manuscript, but agreement was given to a rewritten version in which every line of incriminating material had been expunged.
A heavily censored version of The London Cage duly appeared in the bookshops in 1957.
But officials at the War Office, and their successors at the Ministry of Defence, remained troubled.
Years later, in September 1979, Scotland’s publishers wrote to the Ministry of Defence out of the blue asking for a copy of the original manuscript by the now dead colonel for their archives.
The request triggered fresh panic as civil servants sought reasons to deny the request. But in the end they quietly deposited a copy in what is now the National Archives at Kew, where it went unnoticed — until I found it a quarter of a century later.
Is there more to tell about the London Cage? Almost certainly. Even now, some of the MoD’s files on it remain beyond reach.
Scotland, his interrogators, technicians and typists, and the towering guardsmen left the building in January 1949. The villas were unoccupied for several years.
Eventually, numbers six and seven were leased to the Soviet Union, which was looking for a new embassy building. Today, they house the chancery of the Russian embassy.
Number eight — where it is thought the worst excesses were carried out — remained empty. It was too large to be a family home in the post-war years and in too poor a state of repair to be converted to offices. By 1955, the building had fallen into such disrepair it was sold to a developer, who knocked it down and built a block of three luxury flats. One that went on the market in 2006 was valued at £13.5 million.
The Cage was not, however, Britain’s only secret interrogation centre during and after World War II. MI5 also operated an interrogation centre, code-named Camp 020, at Latchmere House, a Victorian mansion near Ham Common in South-West London, whose 30 rooms were turned into cells with hidden microphones.
The first of the German spies who arrived in Britain in September 1940 were taken there. Vital information about a coming German invasion was extracted at great speed. This indicates the use of extreme methods, but these were desperate days demanding desperate measures. In charge was Colonel Robin Stephens, known as ‘Tin Eye’, because of the monocle fixed to his right eye.
It was not a term of affection. The object of interrogation, Stephens told his officers, was simple: ‘Truth in the shortest possible time.’ A top secret memo spoke of ‘special methods’, but did not elaborate.
He arranged for an additional 92-cell block to be added to Latchmere House, plus a punishment room — known chillingly as Cell 13 — which was completely bare, with smooth walls and a linoleum floor.
Close to 500 people passed through the gates of Camp 020. Principal among them were German spies, many of whom were ‘turned’ and persuaded — or maybe forced — to work for MI5.
Its first inmates were members of the British Union of Fascists. Some were held in cells brightly lit 24 hours a day, others in cells kept in total darkness.
Several prisoners were subjected to mock executions and were knocked about by the guards. Some were apparently left naked for months at a time.
Camp 020 had a resident medical officer, Harold Dearden, a psychiatrist who dreamed up regimes of starvation and of sleep and sensory deprivation intended to break the will of its inmates. He experimented in techniques of torment that left few marks — methods that could be denied by the torturers and that civil servants and government ministers could disown.
These techniques surfaced again after the war in a British interrogation facility at Bad Nenndorf, a German spa town, in one of the internment camps for those considered a threat to the Allied occupation.
In the four years after the war, 95,000 people were interned in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany. Some were interrogated by what was now termed the Intelligence Division.
In charge of Bad Nenndorf was ‘Tin Eye’ Stephens,on attachment from MI5, and drawing on his Camp 020 experiences. An inmate recalled him yelling questions at prisoners and then punching them.
Over the next two years, 372 men and 44 women would pass through his hands. One German inmate recalled being told by a British intelligence officer: ‘We are not bound by any rules or regulations. We do not care a damn whether you leave this place on a stretcher or in a hearse.’
He was made to sleep on a wet floor in a temperature of minus 20 degrees for three days. Four of his toes had to be amputated due to frostbite.
A doctor in a nearby hospital complained about the number of detainees brought to him filthy, confused and suffering from multiple injuries and frostbite. Many were painfully emaciated after months of starvation. A number died.
The regime was intended to weaken, humiliate and intimidate prisoners.
With complaints soaring, a British court of inquiry was convened to investigate what had been going at Bad Nenndorf. It concluded that former inmates’ allegations of physical assault were substantially correct. Stephens and four other officers were arrested while Bad Nenndorf was abruptly closed.
But there was a quandary for the Labour government. The political fallout could be deeply damaging. There were other similar interrogation centres in Germany.
From the very top, there were urgent moves to hush things up.
Stephens’ court martial for ill-treatment of prisoners was heard behind closed doors. He did not deny any of the horrors. His defence was that he had no idea the prisoners for whom he was responsible were being beaten, whipped, frozen, deprived of sleep and starved to death.
This was the very defence that had been offered — unsuccessfully — by Nazi concentration camp commandants at war-crimes trials. But he was acquitted.
When it comes to propaganda, lies, corruption, cruelty, murder, war crimes, and evil, it looks like it's a level playing field: there's no distinction between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'.
Everything is a lie.
The account in this article is a drop in the ocean of injustices and crimes committed by the 'good guys' before, during and after world wars, and in the 70 years since.
Seventy years since the WWII torture of Germans and various other war crimes committed by the British and the Americans, the corrupt, lying, lawless and morally bankrupt British authorities hold an Australian journalist hostage of political persecution and detention without charge, following WikiLeaks exposure of modern day corruption and war crimes of Western governments.
Assange is denied medical access and deprived of liberty, under threat of extradition to the convicted in absentia, war criminal, torturing, kidnapping and assassinating Americans, while the bustling modern world stands by and lets these long-time bad actors and geopolitical villains get away with this crime, day after day for 5 years.
Does anybody else feel sick knowing there's no limit to the depths of Western state depravity, lies and hypocrisy?
How odd that the Russians have been allocated the British torture chamber interrogation suites in London as embassy premises.
Is this some kind of attempt at modern-day psychological warfare on the Russian ambassadors in London, I'm wondering?
Although I'm appalled by disclosures in the article, I'm also kind of drawn to the creepiness of the torture chamber and imagine a visit to the back end of the Russian embassy in London could be an interesting and eerie experience.
The British were torturing German prisoners 4 years after the end of war, but it's unclear to me why, when the war was a long time over.
First inmates of the London torture chambers were members of the British Union of Fascists.
As the torturing war criminal Western governments are just totalitarian fronts for elites and their corporate interests, the first round targeting of fascists with state torture is probably based more on the existing political and economic elite's determination to maintain its power, than on the objective merits of proposals by fascists:
"British fascist corporatism planned to replace the House of Lords with elected executives drawn from major industries, the clergy, and colonies. The House of Commons was to be reduced to allow for a faster, "less factionist" democracy." [wikipedia]
Replacement of the House of Lords sounds like a sensible idea, but replacing the overlords with industrialists and clergy is just allocating power to more of the same types of elites, isn't it?
Don't know enough about political fascism to judge these ideas as a whole.
Hey, I've just realised that the CAGE support for victims of 'war on terror' UK NGO is probably styled after the original British Cage torture history name.
As torture and war, disguised as 'national security' and 'humanitarianism', has continued unabated the last 70 years, the warmonger elite serving Western puppet state fronts for what poses as 'democracy' and representative government, really ought to drop the entirely unconvincing 'peace' and 'humanitarian' propaganda: the financial and social costs of serial US-led military interventions, resulting in blow-back invasion by refugee immigration that inundates the Western austerity-punished underprivileged, Western working classes and Western taxpayers, is evident to those bearing the brunt of blow-back, whose societies are being wilfully destroyed by treasonous, lying, elite and foreign interest serving politicians.
CIA Agent Convicted in Italy for Kidnapping Detained in Portugal
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Monday, October 12, 2015
A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who was convicted in absentia for the kidnapping of a terror suspect in Italy was prevented from leaving Portugal and may be sent to Italy to serve her sentence.
Sabrina De Sousa was convicted, along with 22 other Americans, of participating in the abduction from a Milan street of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, in 2003. He was taken to Egypt, where he was tortured, according to his wife and Italian prosecutors. He was freed in 2007.
De Sousa says she wasn’t involved in the kidnapping, but did serve as an interpreter during its planning stages, according to The Washington Post. Since she and the other Americans—most of them CIA officials— were convicted by the Italian court in 2009, De Sousa has been outspoken in her criticism of the U.S. government’s seeming abandonment of those involved in the kidnapping.
She told the Post that she knew that she could be detained by traveling to Portugal, but wanted to bring the matter to a head, either with the United States granting her diplomatic immunity or by Italy reinvestigating the kidnapping or granting her and those also convicted clemency.
“This has gone on for 10 years,” De Sousa said. “It’s impacted my life. I’ve got relatives in Europe, and I don’t see any reason to give that up. The rendition should have never taken place, and we were all thrown under the bus for it.”
De Sousa expressed surprise that it took Portuguese authorities as long as it did to detain her. “The interesting part of it is the timing,” De Sousa told the Post. “Why now? When I came into Portugal I did not get detained. I have been here for several months and the Italians never asked Portugal to surrender me to Italy. When was it put into their system at the airport? Someone in Italy seemed to know I was traveling.”
She said she was prohibited last Monday from leaving the country, but after a court hearing only had to surrender her passport and was not jailed.
De Sousa left the CIA in 2009 and sued to get diplomatic immunity to protect her from the Italian charges, but her case was dismissed.
Only one other defendant in the case has come close to being extradited. Robert Seldon Lady, who was the CIA’s station chief in Milan at the time of the kidnapping, was detained in Panama two years ago at Italy’s request but was released. One of the defendants, Col. Joseph L. Romano III, a retired Air Force commander, was pardoned by the Italian court in 2013.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a.k.a. Abu Omar, was born in Egypt in 1963. Having been detained and tortured by the Egyptian regime for his involvement in Egypt’s militant Islamic Group, he was granted political asylum in Italy in 2001. In the lead up to the Iraq war of 2003, he campaigned against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This sparked surveillance by the Italian authorities of his activities, and investigations into the contacts he kept. The Italian authorities alleged that he was recruiting fighters to go to Iraq and resist the occupation. He denies this.
On 17 February 2003 Nasr was apprehended in Milan by a man in a police uniform. He was bundled into a van where men in balaclavas beat, blindfolded and restrained him. The journey lasted several hours, and on arrival at what is now known to be the US airbase at Aviano, Nasr was prepared for his rendition to Cairo, via the Ramstein airbase in Germany. Common with other rendition victims, his clothes were cut off, a suppository was forcibly inserted into his rectum, his head was taped leaving holes only for his mouth and nose, and he was forced onto a CIA-contracted Gulfstream IV jet with registration number N85VM, operated by Richmor Aviation.
These people don't deserve immunity or clemency, but they'll get it because we live in a corrupt world in which corruption and might is right.
Even if this guy had been organising a resistance to the 2003 US invasion, how does that make him a 'terrorist' when the US invasion of Iraq was illegal and on false pretexts?
Robert Seldon Lady was released by Panama and Col. Joseph L. Romano III was pardoned by Italy, so I don't see Italy playing hard ball regarding De Sousa.
Everybody's corrupt, but I get the impression that Italy and Latin America are that bit extra corrupt and somehow linked and closely linked to the US and CIA, so why are they even bothering to go through this farce of convicting the CIA?
Found the torture and rape of this guy rather disturbing.
The U.S. must protect its employees from foreign lawsuits
Illustration on the threats of foreign legal prosecution of exposed U.S. intelligence personnel by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
By Edward M. Roche - - Monday, August 31, 2015
Hacking is today’s growth industry. The numbers are staggering. Thirty-two million users of the Ashley Madison sex-sharing website were exposed. Home Depot lost 56 million accounts; Anthem, 80 million; JP Morgan Chase, 76 million; eBay, 145 million; Sony PlayStation Network, 77 million; and TJ Maxx, 94 million records. All of these hacks have caused massive disruption to the targeted organization, legal liability for cyber-negligence, and anguish to consumers.
The U.S. government also is under siege, and along with it the intelligence community (IC), which is a priority target. The recent hacking of the Office of Personnel Management likely exposed the identities of some current and former IC employees. That data breach alone is unlikely to have compromised all IC employees. But when face recognition methods, sophisticated big-data techniques and cross-indexing of multiple data bases such as consumer, insurance or state records, are woven together, it is reasonable to expect most former and even current IC employees eventually will be identified. And when that happens, their identities undoubtedly will be published on the Internet for everyone in the world to see. Then what?
As the information leaks out, the standing army of hostile intelligence community watchers overseas and in the United States will be ready to file lawsuits against individual IC employees or retirees for every type of criminal act and tort they can dream up, no matter how misguided. At the individual level, principles of national jurisdictionguarantee that practically all espionage activities are a violation of the national law where they take place. Generally, there is no immunity for secret agents, although on occasion the acts of an agent have been equated with the national acts of his sovereign and considered sufficient grounds for quietly dropping the suit. But the Internet is making espionage more visible.Counter-espionage, in a sense, has been crowd-sourced to a self-organizing network of watchers worldwide.
Indictment of intelligence officials is not new. Once espionage is uncovered, it is difficult for a prosecutor to resist public outrage by refusing to take action.Prosecution of U.S. intelligence community members is rising in foreign courts. In June, 13 CIA officers were indicted in Italy, and convicted in absentia in July.After all, extraordinary rendition is a casus belli and violation by a nation-state of international law. Now these IC officers no longer can travel to any country that has an extradition treaty with Italy. In February 2007, Italy indicted another 25 supposed CIA agents. In January 2007, Germany issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA operatives. A German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, attempted to sue the United States and Spain over his arrest by American intelligence, but in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case on national security grounds.
What about suing individual U.S. intelligence agents, not in a U.S. court, but in a foreign court? Using standard investigative procedures, in 2005 the Spanish police identified the three American pilots who handled Mr. el-Masri’s flight, and were even able to peel away their false names. For some reason, the German prosecutor held back, and the potential case quickly was escalated up to a matter of diplomacy between the United States and Germany. Nothing happened. This time. But what about the future?
As thousands of intelligence community employee identities are revealed, as they will be, it is reasonable to expect the number of cases against individual IC members will proliferate.Not all can be the subject of bilateral nation-state negotiations. Not all will be in jurisdictions that are close allies with the United States. IC retirees will be faced with mounting headaches, legal bills and seizure of overseas assets.
When intelligence community employees put their lives on the line to serve their country, they knowingly take great personal risks. Their anonymity or false names might help them. But when the curtain is thrown back, and they are exposed, then does the U.S. government owe them protection? Or does the U.S. have a de facto policy that leaves retirees hanging out to dry? This would be neither honorable or just, and undoubtedly is not intended.
Time is short. Sources confirm China’s Ministry of State Security likely has been cross-indexing insurance, airlines and Office of Personnel Management security clearance files. One support network for the IC already has been compromised, and there are more to come.
This problem needs to be studied in greater detail. A legal fund must be established to support the litigation needed to protect exposed agents. U.S. extradition laws might be reviewed. Within the intelligence community, the legal departments that manage accountability need to be funded so they can expand and take on these new challenges. It is bad enough that IC employees no longer can assume their identities will be securely protected by the government, but they should be able to count on robust support if they are attacked in foreign courts.
• Edward M. Roche is a member of the American Society of International Law and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------
EXTRACT
European court of human rights finds against CIA abuse of Khaled el-Masri
America must now apologise to the German citizen, a victim of mistaken identity who was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA
The much-maligned European court of human rights has this week shown itself at its very best: standing up for the rights of an individual who has been denied justice for almost nine years since he was abducted, secretly detained, and tortured under the CIA's rendition program.
Khaled El-Masri, a German national, was seized by Macedonian security officers on 31 December 2003, at a border crossing, because he had been mistaken for an al-Qaida suspect. He was held incommunicado and abused in Macedonian custody for 23 days, after which he was handcuffed, blindfolded, and driven to Skopje airport, where he was handed over to the CIA and severely beaten.
The CIAstripped, hooded, shackled, and sodomized el-Masri with a suppository – in CIA parlance, subjected him to "capture shock" – as Macedonian officials stood by. The CIA drugged him and flew him to Kabul to be locked up in a secret prison known as the "Salt Pit", where he was slammed into walls, kicked, beaten, and subjected to other forms of abuse. Held at the Salt Pit for four months, el-Masri was never charged, brought before a judge, or given access to his family or German government representatives.
The CIA ultimately realised that it had mistaken el-Masri for an al-Qaida suspect with a similar name. But it held on to him for weeks after that. It was not until 24 May 2004, that he was flown, blindfolded, earmuffed, and chained to his seat, to Albania, where he was dumped on the side of the road without explanation.
This is the first court to comprehensively and specifically find that the CIA's rendition techniques amounted to torture. The decision stands in sharp contrast to the abject failure of US courts to deliver justice to victims of US torture and rendition.
Both the United States and Macedonia must now issue el-Masri a full-scale public apology andappropriate compensation.
[...]
The
European court's decision in the el-Masri case is a clarion call for
accountability for the flagrantly illegal CIA rendition program.
Now Can Torture Survivor Khaled El-Masri Have His Apology?
By Steven M. Watt, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program
December 15, 2014 | 2:33 PM
EXTRACTS
[ ... ]
It took the intervention of the National Security Council to settle the dispute and secure Khaled's repatriation to [Albania, where he was dumped on the side of the road] Germany in May 2005. That would confirm that, despite her claim to the contrary, Condoleezza Rice, a member of the council then and later secretary of state, would have known that mistakes had been made resulting in Khaled's wrongful rendition and detention when she visited Germany in December 2005.
[...]
Despite
all this, the Obama administration has so far declined to acknowledge
Khaled's wrongful detention and abuse, and State Department lawyers
have yet to respond to his petition to the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, filed over six years ago. Protecting
legitimate state secrets wasn't the CIA's primary interest. It invoked
secrecy to cover up its embarrassing mistakes – which included
egregious human rights violations – and to avoid accountability.
Now
that the CIA's mistakes and atrocities are a matter of public record,
the government should take responsibility for them and make amends. As
an important first step, the United States should provide Khaled – and other victims of CIA torture – with a full, official, and public accounting of what the CIA did to him, and grant him an apology, compensation, and counseling for rehabilitation.
Added following above, because it is an important detail:
[Albania, where he was dumped on the side of the road]
If the National Security Council settled a dispute regarding el-Masri's 'repatriation to Germany', why was he subsequently dumped, mafia style, by the side of the road in Albania?
The CIA's El-Masri Abduction:Cables Show Germany Caved to Pressure from Washington
By Matthias Gebauer and John Goetz
December 09, 2010 – 07:49 PM
The
American diplomatic cables provide new details about the case of
Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen abducted by the CIA in 2003. The
reports confirm just how much pressure the US put on Germany to not
pursue 13 agents believed to have been involved. But they also reveal
how cooperative and responsive German officials were in light of
American worries.
[ ... ]
Just a few days ago,WikiLeaks published a cable recounting the details of a meeting that then-Deputy
US Ambassador John M. Koenig had in the German Chancellery, the official
office of Chancellor Angela Merkel. During the conversation, Koenigasked the Germans to "weigh carefully at every step of the way the
implications for relations with the US"that investigations into the
CIA-organized abduction would have. In another embassy cable, the
Americans reported that Berlin had been informed of the "potential
negative implications for our bilateral relationship" in the longer
term.
A previously unknown cable from the US Embassy in Berlin, dated Feb.
1, 2007, throws light on how the Germans behaved during this back-room
horse-trading. A day earlier, German prosecutors in Munich had issued
arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA operatives believed to have been
involved in the abduction of el-Masri in Macedonia in late 2003 as well
as in his being taken via Baghdad to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan
on Jan. 23, 2004. There, el-Masri was detained and interrogated until
finally being released without charges and brought back to Germany at
the end of May that year.
[ ...]
The details that have recently emerged illustrate that Germany was
engaged in a bit of double-dealing when it came to the el-Masri case. In
public, the German government continued to call for an investigation. But neither the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel nor the Justice
Ministry would have touched the hot issue of illegal CIA kidnappings if
it hadn't have been for the pressure exerted upon them by the media.
Behind closed doors, German officials agreed that el-Masri was
apparently merely the unfortunate victim of mistaken identity because of
his name. But nobody wanted to have investigations into the CIA, which
would surely cause even more damage to already tattered German-American
relations.
[ ...]
... In 2007, then-Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries decided not to further
pursue the 13 CIA agents. Though their names were still on an Interpol
wanted persons list, the United States stated that it would not
recognize its validity. Zypries explained that the Americans had made
clear to her that they would neither arrest nor hand over the 13 CIA
agents. In the end, she concluded that, given the slim chances of
success, it made no sense to even try to get them extradited.
How Sweden Collaborated With CIA on Renditions and Framing of Assange
By Feature Article NEWS JUNKIE POST Dec 19, 2012 at 5:54 pm By Rafik Saley, Okoth Osewe, and John Goss
By his own admission, Sweden’s Ambassador to Australia Mr. Sven-Olof Petersson had advance knowledge of the CIA rendition flight that took place on December 18, 2001 from Stockholm to Egypt. This flight ended in Egyptian nationals Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery being illegally rendered and tortured. Mr. Petersson’s admission comes from a statement to the Swedish Parliament’s Constitutional Committee, confirming that he attended a briefing on December 17, 2001 at which the rendition process was finalized. Moreover, the Constitutional Committee’s report shows that he knew about the renditions at the end of November and probably even in mid-November. In fact, it was he who kept Minister of Foreign AffairsAnna Lindh updatedon the progress of deportation arrangements with the CIA in November 2001.[i] Petersson was then Sweden’s Director General for Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[ii]
Illegal and unconstitutional decisionsof this sort, made behind closed doors, show contempt for the Swedish legal system, which has been further denigrated by attempts to get Wikileaks founder Julian Assange flown to Sweden on flimsy allegations of a sexual nature, from where, concerned parties believe the CIA would pick him up and put him on trial in the United States. Ironically, it was through Wikileaks that the world learned about the diplomatic tiff between the US and Sweden that brought an end to Swedish rendition in 2006.[iii]
As the Director General for Political Affairs, Mr. Petersson was in regular contact with the US Embassy in Stockholm and was aware of the US request that two Egyptian nationals be illegally rendered.[iv] The rendition went ahead without protest or representation on behalf of the victims, and no one in the Swedish government has been made accountable for this flagrant breach of the law. An admission of Sweden’s culpability can be found in the SEK 3 million (about $458,000) compensation paid to each of the two men after their eventual release.[v] This “hush money” appears to have paid for the non-disclosure of the identities of the Swedish representatives who sought assurances from Cairo prior to the men’s rendition.[vi]
Not only Petersson, but also Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström and then Foreign Minister Anna Lindhknew about the renditions.[vii] Thomas Bodström spent a year in the US between 2010 – 2011, purportedly for rehabilitation in connection with alcohol and substance abuse, while he was a partner in the legal firm Borgström & Bodström. It would be lax not to point out to readers that Claes Borgström is the lawyer who was called upon to prosecute Julian Assange over allegations that had previously been dismissed. Further, Borgström is known to be friendly with Irmeli Krans, the police interrogator who took SW’s original statement against Assange.Irmeli Krans, in turn, is friendly with the other complainant, AA, who, it is said, illegally sat in on Irmeli Krans’ interview of SW. [viii]
The rendered Egyptians, both of whom were asylum seekers, were returned to Egypt despite Sweden’s Aliens Act (1989) that forbids repatriation to a country where nationals are likely to be tortured. It was well known even then that Egypt uses torture against political prisoners.[ix] The torture of both men on the flight to Egypt, included them being hooded, handcuffed and strapped down. The brutality of the torture in Egypt was captured in a comment by Mr. Agiza who noted that the interrogators routinely beat him, strapped him to a wet mattress and subjected him to electric shock through electrodes attached to his ear lobes, nipples, and genitals.[x]
Mr. Petersson´sstatements to the Australian media on the impartiality of the Swedish legal system ring hollow when judged against his prior personal involvement in renditions. Even more disturbing is the fact that they have been echoed by Australian Foreign minister Bob Carr. The adoption of the statements shows a lack of judgment on Carr’s part and brings the Australian government’s foreign policy under scrutiny. Carr has urged Assange to travel to Sweden and claimed that it was unlikely that he would be extradited.[xi] Recent statements byEU Home Affairs Minister Cecilia Malmström, urging Mr. Assange to “just go to Sweden” have the same hollow ring.[xii] Malmström has worked closely with US interests in Sweden and elsewhere in adopting harsh measures to stifle free speech in Europe. She purports to know nothing about the Assange case. On the other hand, her partiality and close affinity to the United States are demonstrated by her recent joint briefing with US attorney general Eric Holder.[xiii] She has also co-authored an article with him.[xiv]
The question on every reasonable person’s lips is: why can’t the Swedish government “just give Mr. Assange the diplomatic guarantees that he has asked for?” In light of Sweden´s complicity in illegal rendition right up to 2006, a diplomatic guarantee to Assange that he won’t be extradited to the US is of integral importance. After all, the Swedish government has the final say in the matter and, if its past history in illegal renditions is anything to go by, Assange’s fears about extradition or rendition to the United States are justifiable.
The Swedish Ambassador accuses Sydney Morning Herald columnist Elizabeth Farrelly of having no knowledge of Sweden.[xv] It is imperative that the columnist learns about Sweden and its foreign policy of the past 20 years, so she might pass on the sinister dealings to her readership. Until recent years, Sweden had a peace policy of which to be proud. For 150 years, the country abstained from war and, in 1966, to celebrate this highly-enviable record, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) was established. After Sweden started cooperating with NATO, the situation began to change.[xvi] Not long afterwards, the Swedish military became involved in world conflicts, and more recently it has looked poised for greater involvement.[xvii] This is not the old Sweden but a new country that demonstrates an unparalleled hypocrisy in its international relations. This trend continues in the refusal by authorities to grant Assange the reasonable assurances that he seeks.
Prominent international supporters of Mr. Assange, like Baltasar Garzon, John Pilger, Michael Moore, and Jemima Khan are ridiculed in Sweden today. In addition to the recent changes in foreign and domestic policy, the third largest political party in the country, called Sweden Democrats (SD), has made massive gains during the last elections, despite openly calling for the repatriation of immigrants from Sweden. The SD party enjoyed a 10% parliamentary share of the vote, which translated into 20 Parliamentary seats. The Swedish government seems to be following the direction of the SD party, especially in its foreign policy positions, which are increasingly pro-American and anti-democratic.
Because of Sweden’s pro-American stance on key political issues,a legal system has developed with multiple loopholesthat could easily be exploited to Assange’s disadvantage. This legal framework is constitutionally racist against foreigners, especially when they contest ethnic Swedish nationals of the cherished blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic model. Most worrying of all, Sweden’s history of hypocrisy, lopsidedness and double-speak in dealings with the international community highlights the risk that Julian Assange would be in physical danger if extradited to Sweden from the UK. Under such circumstances, it is reasonable for him to seek unequivocal diplomatic assurances that he would not be extradited to the US if he agrees to go to Sweden for questioning.
Despite the pressures from the United States and other pro-western governments, the Republic of Ecuador has granted political asylum to Mr. Assange. On the other hand, the United Kingdom has hindered the free movement of Mr. Assange even though the same government blocked the extradition to Spain of the late Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Mr. Pinochet was wanted for the murder of 94 Spanish citizens and many other charges of torture and rape against his own people. Although Julian Assange is an Australian citizen, the Australian government has refused to protect him and has instead accommodated Swedish Ambassador Sven-Olof Petersson, who supports rendition and torture. This is unacceptable in a free, democratic and transparent society.
Editor’s Notes: Rafik Saley is general secretary of the African Committee for Development in Stockholm, Sweden; Okoth Osewe writes for Kenya Stockholm Blog; John Goss is a writer and researcher, United Kingdom.
"known for saying and thinking what other military leaders were afraid to" *one of the reasons cited for his appointment*
to lead all forces in Afghanistan
AFGHANISTAN post
fm: June 15, 2009 - June 23, 2010
Defence Secretary Robert Gates:
"perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I (have) ever met."
Last assignment:
Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
Commander, US Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A)
Director, Joint Staff fm Aug 2008 - Jun 2009
Commander, Joint Special Operations Command fm 2003 - 2008
*criticized for alleged role in cover-up of the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident.
reportedly:
unflattering (and unprofessional) remarks about Vice President Joe Biden and other administration officials
attributed to McChrystal and his aides in a Rolling Stone article
McChrystal recalled to Washington, DC
Obama accepted his resignation as commander in Afghanistan
ISAF COMMAND - Afghanistan
assumed by:
deputy commander, British Army General Sir Nicholas "Nick" Parker
{ pending the confirmation of a replacement }
General David Petraeus = McChrystal's replacement
------
serving in the Pentagon as member of the Joint Staff, start of Iraq War in March 2003
{vice director of operations, J-3, since July 2002}
McChrystal
delivered nationally televised Pentagon briefings on US military operations in Iraq
April 2003 shortly after the fall of Baghdad:
announced, "I would anticipate that the major combat engagements are over."
Commanded the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for five (5) years
Sep 2003 to Feb 2006
Commander, Joint Special Operations Command/ Commander, Joint Special Operations Command Forward, fm Feb 2006 to Aug 2008
Most of assignment in Afghanistan
at US Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar & in Iraq
{nominally assigned Fort Bragg, Nth Carolina}
Success: capture by JSOC forces of Saddam Hussein in December 2003
McChrystal's Zarqawi unit, Task Force 6-26
= well known for interrogation methods, Camp Nama
= accused of abusing detainees
= taskforce disciplined after Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal became public in April 2004
criticized for his role in aftermath of 2004 death by friendly fire of Ranger and former professional football player Pat Tillman.
McChrystal
= one of eight officers recommended for discipline by a subsequent Pentagon investigation.
= Army declined to take action against him.
late spring 2007 JSOC and CIASpecial Activities Division teams launch new series of highly effective covert operations that coincided with the Iraq War troop surge of 2007
killing or capturing many of the key al-Qa'ida leaders in Iraq
joint efforts of JSOC and CIA paramilitary units said to be: most significant contributor to the defeat of al-Qa'ida in Iraq
McChrystal credited with
= transforming and modernizing JSOC
= into a "force of unprecedented agility & lethality"
= key factor success of JSOC in success of war Iraq
George W. Bush
failed to promote McChrystal
assigned 3-star: Dir. Joint Staff, Feb 2008
Senate Armed Services Committee
stalled McChystal confirmation
more info sought: alleged mistreatment detainees by Special Ops under McChrystal command in IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN
June 10, 2009
Senate approval to take command McChrystal was promoted to general assumed command of NATO ops Operation Khanjar commenced
largest offensive op and beginning of deadliest combat month for NATO forces since 2001
LEAKED REPORT
McChrystal
submitted a 66-page report to Defense Secretary Robert Gates calling for more troops in Afghanistan
"We are going to win."
public: Sept 20, 2009
*warned that the war Afghanistan may be lost if more troops are not sent
*30,000 - 40,000 more troops needed in Afghanistan
Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq (Scott Ritter)
stated McChrystal:
should be fired for insubordination for disclosing info he should have said only in private to the President of USA
leaked report - aka the "McChrystal risk" boxed Obama into a corner about boosting troop levels in Afghanistan
MICHAEL HASTINGS
freelance journalist
Article: "The Runaway General",
Rolling Stone magazine, July 8–22, 2010 issue
McChrystal and his staff reportedly mocked: *civilian government officials
*Joe Biden
*National Security Advisor James L. Jones
*US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry
*Special Representative for Afghanistan & Pakistan Richard Holbrooke
McChrystal's staff
= contacted prior to release of article and did not deny validity of the article
= Hastings: bemused at degree to which soldiers were free when speaking to him
= senior members of his staff dispute this
= accused Hastings of exaggerating seniority of aides quoted & breaking the "off the record" trust of private conversations
McChrystal
apology to Joe Biden:
"I extend my sincerest apology for this profile."
McChyristal called in by Obama
= McChrystal tendered his resignation | Obama accepted
Obama statement re resignation:
"... certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military and for our country."
WHITEHOUSE - 4-STAR RANK
WH announced that McChrystal would retain his four-star rank in retirement
{law generally requires a four-star officer to hold his rank for three years in order to retain it in retirement}
RETIREMENT CEREMONY
McChrystal awarded the:
Distinguished Service Medal
by Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey
Defence Distinguished Service Medal
by Secretary of Defence Robert Gates
PENTAGON INQUIRY
Pentagon report
= challenged accuracy of article "The Runaway General" (Michael Hastings)
= disputing key incidents or comments reported in Hastings' article. Rolling Stone: = "... Pentagon’s inspector general offers no credible source—or indeed, any named source—contradicting the facts as reported in our story, 'The Runaway General."
-------
At Yale University faculty, teaching courses in International Relations
Chairman of the Board of Siemens Government Systems
On the strategic advisory board of Knowledge International
a licensed arms dealer whose parent company is EAI
a business "very close" to UAE govt
co-founded / partner McChrystal Group LLC
Alexandria, Virginia-based consulting firm
2011 - advocated instituting a national service program in USA
2013 - endorsed stronger US gun control laws
-------
OTHER
McChrystal is the son of Major General Herbert Joseph McChrystal, Jr. (1924–2013)
Entirely military family / and married into military family
EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌ 
