Amnesty International Urges Obama Administration to Repudiate Extraordinary
Rendition as Italian Court Convicts American Spies




WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Tom Parker, Amnesty
International USA's policy director for (counter) terrorism and human rights,
issued the following statement in response to the Italian court's decision to
convict 23 Americans in the CIA kidnapping case of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr,
known as Abu Omar:

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081014/AILOGO)

"Today, U.S. intelligence officers have been convicted of serious criminal
acts by a close ally. In addition to underscoring just how far beyond the law
the previous administration was willing to venture in its 'rendition' program,
this decision is a graphic illustration of just how damaging practices such as
kidnapping and torture are to America's national security.

"Continuing these practices will inevitably have a chilling effect on
countries' willingness to work with the United States until nations can be
sure that America will no longer operate as a rogue nation outside the law.

"The United States shouldn't need a foreign court to distinguish right from
wrong. The Obama administration must repudiate the unlawful practice of
extraordinary rendition - and hold accountable those responsible for having
put this system in place -- or his administration will end up as tarnished as
his predecessor's."

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist
organization with more than 2.2 million supporters, activists and volunteers
in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The
organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the
public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and
dignity are denied.


SOURCE Amnesty International

AIUSA media relations office, +1-202-544-0200 x302

Republic of Fools
-Paul Craig Roberts

This shameful, servile act of “the world’s greatest democracy” occurred the very week that a court in Italy convicted 23 US CIA officers for kidnapping a person in Italy. The CIA agents are now considered “fugitives from justice” in Italy, and indeed they are.

The kidnapped person was renditioned to the American puppet state of Egypt, where the victim was held for years and repeatedly tortured. The case against him was so ab-surd that even an Egyptian judge ordered his release.

One of the convicted CIA operatives, Sabrina deSousa, an attractive young woman, says that the US broke the law by kidnapping a person and sending him to another country to be tortured in order to manufacture another “terrorist” in order to keep the terrorist hoax going at home. Without the terrorist hoax, America’s wars for special interest reasons would become transparent even to Fox “News” junkies.

Ms. deSousa says that “everything I did was approved back in Washington,” yet the government, which continually berates us to “support the troops,” did nothing to pro-tect her when she carried out the Bush regime’s illegal orders.

Clearly, this means that the crime that Bush, Cheney, the Pentagon, and the CIA or-dered is too heinous and beyond the pale to be justified, even by memos from the des-picable John Yoo and the Republican Federalist Society.

Ms. deSousa is clearly worried about herself. But where is her concern for the innocent person that she sent into an Egyptian hell to be tortured until death or admission of being a terrorist? The remorse deSousa expresses is only for herself. She did her evil government’s bidding and her evil government that she so faithfully served turned its back on her. She has no remorse for the evil she committed against an innocent person.

Perhaps deSousa and her 22 colleagues grew up on video games. It was great fun to plot to kidnap a real person and fly him on a CIA plane to Egypt. Was it like a fisher-man catching a fish or a deer hunter killing a beautiful 8 -point buck? Clearly, they got their jollies at the expense of their renditioned victim.

The finding of the Italian court, and keep in mind that Italy is a bought-and-paid-for US puppet state, indicates that even our bought puppets are finding the US too much to stomach.

Moving from the tip of the iceberg down, we have Ambassador Craig Murray, rector of the University of Dundee and until 2004 the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which he describes as a Stalinist totalitarian state courted and supported by the Americans.

As ambassador, Murray saw the MI5 intelligence reports from the CIA that described the most horrible torture procedures. “People were raped with broken bottles, children were tortured in front of their parents until they [the parents] signed a confession, people were boiled alive.”

“Intelligence” from these torture sessions was passed on by the CIA to MI5 and to Washington as proof of the vast al Qaeda conspiracy.

Amb. Murray reports that the people delivered by CIA flights to Uzbekistan’s torture prisons “were told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”
“I was absolutely stunned,” says the British ambassador, who thought that he served a moral country that, along with its American ally, had moral integrity. The great Anglo-American bastion of democracy and human rights, the homes of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the great moral democracies that defeated Nazism and stood up to Stalin’s gulags, were prepared to commit any crime in order to maximize profits.

IN Italy.



http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS201176+04-Nov-2009+PRN20091104

More



http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15967

I am sure this isn't the whole story. I am sure we will never know the whole story. If this guy was some innocent man that shouldn't have been picked up, do you really think he would have ever walked out of an Egyptian prison alive?

I seriously doubt it.

Actually, you are wrong. I am assuming you are referring to Maher Arar. I suggest you read the Canadian Commission of Inquiry's report.

Here is an excerpt:

"The Commission, primarily charged with shedding light on the role of the Canadian government and not the US role, found that Canadian officials and police had provided intelligence to US authorities on Arar, much of it flawed or biased."

Interestingly enough, the Italian case is very similar. The Italian police investigated Omar, then passed on information to The Italian government, then the CIA.

Facts seem inconsequential when you have an axe to grind, or they don't quite fit your arguments. Your summation of factual events seems a little lacking, and I suggest you refresh your memory before posting something.

On a side note.. Arar was sent to Syria, not Egypt.

I am sure this isn't the whole story. I am sure we will never know the whole story. If this guy was some innocent man that shouldn't have been picked up, do you really think he would have ever walked out of an Egyptian prison alive?

I seriously doubt it.