Oct. 13, 2006 - US Follows Egypt in Descent to Torture - Torture Flights and Patriot Act Imitate Dictator Ruled Country
The US has decended a slippery slope - we are becoming more and more like the shunned countries ruled by ruthless despots.
- In 2001 we started snatching people off the streets of the world to be tortured
- In 2001 we changed our laws in the example of Egypt in 1981 - to make it easier to snatch, grab and torture US citizens as well.
A British writer tells how he found out that the US was flying people out of the country to be tortured.
After that report, see about the eery similiarity between the US's Patriot Act to Egypt's "emergency laws" used to allow torture. Laws that have been in place for 20 years in Egypt.
Oct. 12, 2006 - An unsolicited remark from Porter Goss, then chairman House Intelligence Committee, led a British journalist to unravel many of the details of the CIA’s controversial “extraordinary rendition” program, according to a new book. The disclosure of this highly sensitive operation later prompted a major leak investigation that roiled the agency.
British reporter Stephen Grey's new book describes Goss' involvement in "torture flights" - see “Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program,”
The "tip-off" came in 2001
Grey reports that his initial tip-off to what the CIA was doing came during a Dec. 14, 2001, interview he had with Florida Congressman Goss on Capitol Hill about the war on terror. At the time, Grey, a veteran reporter who wrote for The Sunday Times of London, asked the House Intelligence Committee chairman about the prospect that Osama bin Laden might be captured and turned over to the U.S. government.
“It’s called a rendition,” Goss replied. “Do you know that?”
Stop the Press!
Last February Goss told the Senate that a grand jury investigation should to find out who leaked info about the secret CIA prison program:
"It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand-jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less."
Italy and Germany are investigating the CIA's involvement in torturing their citizens.
Italy charges that CIA took an Italian citizen off of the streets of Milan and flew him to Egypt,
a country
Grey estimates in his book that there have been between 100 to 150 CIA renditions under the secret program, some of which have earned global notoriety. Indeed, in Italy prosecutors have filed criminal charges against more than a dozen suspected CIA officers accused of involvement in the rendition of an Islamic militant known as Abu Omar, who was allegedly apprehended off the streets in Milan and flown to Egypt. Prosecutors in Munich are conducting a similar inquiry into the case of Khalid al-Masri, a German citizen who was abducted while on vacation in Macedonia, held and questioned in a secret prison in Afghanistan and later released without explanation.
Egypt is known as the go-to country if you want to torture someone:
Torture 'systematic' in Egypt
...Individuals were being assaulted with "hands, feet, sticks, whips, cables and metal chains, tortured using hot water and electrocuted", as well as being subject to "sexual and immoral assaults". ..
Egypt torture related to "emergency law" instituted in 1981 and extended to 2006:
Egypt has been under emergency law since Islamic militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The law, renewed in February 2003 for another three years, gives authorities wide powers to arrest, detain and bring civilians before military courts, from which appeals are limited.
Does this "emergency law" sound familiar a fairly new "emergency law" passed by US congress?
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