Misblog

The Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners (TDIP) has issued a scathing 54 paragraph interim final report critical of virtually every aspect of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

The interim report finds it "implausible" that member states where unaware of their direct or indirect participate in the CIA's rendition program:

"[The committee] Considers it implausible, on the basis of the testimonies and documents received to date, that certain European governments were not aware of the activities linked to extraordinary rendition taking place on their territory; in particular, considers it utterly implausible that many hundreds of flights through the airspace of several Member States, and a similar number of movements in and out of European airports could have taken place without the knowledge of either the security services or the intelligence services and without senior officials from those services being at least questioned on the link between those flights and the practice of extraordinary rendition; notes that this assumption is supported by the fact that senior figures in the US administration have always claimed to have acted without encroaching on the national sovereignty of European countries;"

The interim report urges cooperation among the Member States, accession countries, candidate countries and associate countries, member and accession states and reminds them:

"that the prohibition of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as defined in Article 1 of the United Nations Convention against Torture, is absolute and allows no exceptions whether in times of war or threat of war, domestic political instability or any other emergency; recalls that cases of incommunicado detention, abduction or extraordinary rendition constitute violations of fundamental rights under international law, in particular Articles 3 and 5 of the ECHR, especially since these acts are synonymous with torture or inhuman and degrading treatment;"

Most, if not all, of America's policies and actions related to detainee detention and treatment, has been and is one gigantic unmitigated disaster.

I urge Congress to scrap the extraordinary rendition program¹, repeal the entire In Torture We Trust Act 2006, shutdown all secret torture centers, abandon the use of all combat status review tribunals, abandon the use of all military commissions and investigate all aspects of detainee detention and treatment.

Link to Misblog's:

• Who Will Stop The Torture Update-8
• Who Will Stop The Torture Update-7
• Who Will Stop The Torture Update-6
• Who Will Stop The Torture Update-5
• Who Will Stop The Torture Update-4
• Who Will Stop The Torture Update-3
• 
  Who Will Stop The Torture Update-2
• Who Will Stop The Torture Update-1
• Who Will Stop The Torture

-----notes-----

1. Any rendition not for the purpose of immediately presenting a person to a judicial magistrate, in response to lawful, valid, and internationally recognized process issued by that magistrate on behalf of a state adhering to and complying with all international laws and standards on human rights.

Technorati Tags: tdip, detainees, guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons, torture, human rights, tribunals, csrt