Torture manual 'wrongly' lists allies

OTTAWA — Canada's foreign affairs department, responding to pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.

Both nations expressed unhappiness after it emerged that they had been listed in a document that formed part of a training course manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier said he regretted the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual, which also classified some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture.

"It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten," Mr. Bernier said in a statement.

"The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy. As such, it does not convey the government's views or positions."

The document – made available to Reuters and other media outlets embarrassed the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel.

U.S. ambassador David Wilkins said the listing was absurd while the Israeli envoy said he wanted his country removed.

Asked why the two countries had been put on the list, a spokesman for Mr. Bernier said: "The training manual purposely raised public issues to stimulate discussion and debate in the classroom."

The government mistakenly gave the document to Amnesty International Canada as part of a court case the rights organization has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

No one from Amnesty was immediately available for comment.

Under "definition of torture" the document lists U.S. interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners.

It also mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where Canadian Omar Khadr has been held five years. He is accused of killing a U.S. soldier during a clash in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15.

Other countries on the watch list include Syria, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

The foreign ministry launched the torture awareness course after Ottawa was rapped for the way it handled the case of Maher Arar, who was deported from the United States to Syria in 2002.

Mr. Arar was tortured repeatedly during the year he spent in Damascus prisons. An official inquiry into the affair showed Canadian diplomats had not been trained to detect whether detainees might have been abused.

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Cuba said to broaden its spying against U.S.

WASHINGTON -- Cuba has extended its intelligence-gathering capabilities beyond the United States and Latin America to places where vital U.S. interests are at stake -- like Iran, Turkey, India and Pakistan -- a former top U.S. counterintelligence official told lawmakers Thursday.

Chris Simmons, a former counterintelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said a series of intelligence setbacks for Cuba between 1995 and 2003 -- such as the dismantling of a network of spies in Miami, the closure of an intellingece center in Canada and the arrest of former DIA Cuba analyst Ana Montes in 2001 -- forced Cuba to tighten its intelligence operations.

Today Cuba puts trusted top intelligence operatives in charge of key embassy postings and operates more with allies like Iran and Venezuela, Simmons said in a briefing organized by Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Cuba's intelligence apparatus, considered one of the world's most formidable, numbers more than 11,500 agents, he said, of whom about 3,500 are focused on international operations.

Cuba has resorted to employing more of what he called ''ambassador-spies'' -- top intelligence chiefs who have become diplomatic envoys.

Before, Cuba placed such persons in the United States and with a few of Cuba's closest allies, like the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

NEW APPROACH

''We've seen a change in how they use ambassador-spies,'' Simmons said, to ensure that their intelligence centers ``never again get closed.''

Such top intelligence officers are also being dispatched to places where the United States has active military operations, he said.

''They feel compelled to work against every major U.S. military operation for their own interest and because it is vital to their allies,'' he told the lawmakers. He said the information is then shared with U.S. rivals like Russia.

He said Cuba has established four new ''regional intelligence centers'' -- in Iran, India, Pakistan and Turkey.

Simmons, who worked on Cuba for the DIA for a dozen years, has founded the Cuban Intelligence Research Center, based in Leesburg, Va.

Ties with Iran's current authorities have always been close, but the cooperation has become tighter, especially after 2006. The two countries work together on jamming TV and radio broadcasts and on dual-use biotechnology.

Cuba has dispatched a career intelligence officer, Juan Carretero Ibáñez, to India. He was an important intelligence operative in Chile during the 1970s regime of President Salvador Allende and headed a Cuban propaganda outfit, the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

IN PAKISTAN AGAIN

Cuba closed its Pakistan embassy in 1990 but reopened it in April 2006 and appointed ''ambassador-spy'' Gustavo Machín Gómez. Machín was one of the 14 diplomats expelled from the United States in 2003 on accusations of spying.

Cuba's ambassador to Turkey is Ernesto Gómez Abascal, who Simmons said was either an intelligence officer or a collaborator and is a former ambassador to Iraq when it was led by Saddam Hussein. Simmons said Cuba shared information on U.S. military activities with the Hussein government.

Canada puts Gitmo on torture watch list

CTV in Canada reported yesterday that it had “obtained documents that put Guantanamo Bay on a torture watch list” created by the Canadian government. The list is part of a “torture awareness workshop” that tells diplomats where to watch for abuse:

The list includes Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and China. But surprisingly, it also included the United States, Guantanamo Bay, and Israel.

It notes specific “U.S. interrogation techniques,” which include “forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation.” The U.S. has repeatedly denied allegations by international groups that it tortures prisoners captured in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. However, U.S. officials have refused to comment on the Canadian list.

House panel criticizes CIA over tapes

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. House Intelligence Committee criticized the CIA's destruction of videotapes showing harsh interrogation tactics of detainees at secret prisons.

U.S. House of Representatives members heard testimony from the CIA's acting general counsel, John Rizzo, in a closed hearing Wednesday.

The committee chairman, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said he was convinced the CIA skirted its duties to report to congressional oversight members regarding the tapes and their destruction, The Washington Post said Thursday.

House member Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Rizzo testified that the CIA's head of clandestine services, Jose Rodriquez Jr., acted autonomously when he ordered the tapes destruction in November 2005.

"It appears from what we have seen to date that Rodriguez may not have been following instructions" Hoekstra said.

Rodriquez didn't testify in the hearing, though his lawyer said Rodriquez ordered the destruction of the tapes after CIA lawyers gave their approval, the Post report said.

The tapes allegedly depict the water-boarding of two suspected al-Qaida leaders at a secret CIA prison in Thailand during interrogations in 2002. The CIA didn't reveal the existence of the tapes, nor their destruction, until 2005.

"It smells like a coverup, but the question is whether it was illegal or not," an anonymous source familiar with the House hearing told the Post

White House Reused E-Mail Tapes

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages - including those pertaining to the CIA leak case - have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking a CIA officer's identity to reporters.

Before October 2003, the White House recycled its backup tapes "consistent with industry best practices," according to a sworn statement by a White House aide.

Backup tapes are the last line of defense for saving electronic records.

Separately, the statement reveals the extent to which the White House is apparently unable to answer how many e-mails are missing from White House servers.

The White House "does not know if any e-mails were not properly preserved in the archiving process," said the statement by Theresa Payton, chief information officer for the White House Office of Administration. "We are continuing our efforts," said Payton, whose staff is responsible for the White House e-mail system.

If the e-mails were not saved, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records.

TOP SECRET: Detention Criteria GTMO

1. Purpose. To clarify the detention criteria for battlefield detention and long-term detention at GTMO.

2. References. CENTCOM Message, Modification 1 to Implementing Guidance on Detainee Screening and Processing for Transfers of Detainees in Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GTMO)

3. The following is the SECDEF criteria for detention : CENTCOM should, as necessary, obtain control over the following Enemy Combatants:

a. (S) all al Qaeda personnel.

b. (S) all Taliban leaders (Afghan and non-Afghan).

c. (S) non-Afghan Taliban personnel (including named individuals as identified by the

intelligence community; anyone with special skills or education, such as those known

as “professor” or “engineer”; and anyone who speaks a western language).

d. (S) any others whom screeners think may pose a threat to us interests, may have

intelligence value, or may be of law enforcement interest.

4. The definitions applicable to this guidance are:

a. (S) al Qaeda: Usama bin Laden and his supporters, mostly Arab but including

many nationalities, fighting against the US and coalition forces.

b. (S) Afghan Taliban: Afghan officials and fighters of the former regime.

c. (S) Taliban leaders: political officials of the former regime, or commanders of

battalion equivalent sized units, normally 05/06.

d. (S) non-Afghan Taliban: foreign fighters for the former regime (other than al Qaeda).

e. (S) Enemy Combatant (EC): for purposes of this guidance, any person that US or

allied forces could properly detain under the laws and customs of war. For purposes of

this conflict, an EC includes, but is not limited to, a member or agent of al Qaeda, the

Taliban, or another international terrorist organization against which the United States

is engaged in armed conflict.

5. This criteria applies to initial detention in the field and for continued long-term

detention at GTMO. For those in the field, it is essential to understand that US forces

are not authorized to detain “common criminals” that have no connection to combat

activity as stated in the criteria.

6. The place of detention (Afghan prison, BCP, or GTMO) of low level ECs (“foot

soldiers”) who are a threat to US forces, yet have no intelligence value, is a separate

and distinct issue currently being assessed at the highest levels. This will be addressed

separately in the near future once a decision is made.

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DNI McConnell suggests waterboarding is torture

In an interview with the New Yorker, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said that waterboarding “would be torture” if used against him, but still declined to say whether the technique should be legally classified as torture:

“If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture,” McConnell told the magazine. […]

McConnell said the legal test for torture should be “pretty simple”: “Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?”

McConnell warned that if waterboarding is “ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it.”

"Torture is to be expected says appellate court in voiding suit"

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday threw out a suit by four British Muslims who allege that they were tortured and subjected to religious abuse in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a ruling that exonerated 11 present and former senior Pentagon officials.

It appeared to be the first time that a federal appellate court has ruled on the legality of the harsh interrogation tactics that U.S. intelligence officers and military personnel have used on suspected terrorists held outside the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The detainees allege that they were held in stress positions, interrogated for sessions lasting 24 hours, intimidated with dogs and isolated in darkness and that their beards were shaved.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren’t recognized as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were aliens held outside the United States. The Religious Freedom Act prohibits the government from “substantially burdening a person’s religion.”

The court rejected other claims on the grounds that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had certified that the military officials were acting within the scope of their jobs when they authorized the tactics, and that such tactics were “foreseeable.”

“It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably `seriously criminal’ would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants,” Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in the court’s main opinion.

Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented with parts of the opinion, saying that “it leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantanamo are not `person(s).’

‘`This is a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human,” Brown wrote.

After being held for more than two years, the four men were repatriated to Britain in 2004, where they were freed within 24 hours without facing criminal charges, said Washington lawyer Eric Lewis, who represented them along with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Three of the men — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed — say they traveled to Afghanistan from Pakistan in October 2001 to provide humanitarian relief but were seized by an Uzbek warlord in northern Afghanistan the next month and sold to U.S. troops for bounty money. The three said they were unarmed and never engaged in combat against the United States.

The fourth, Jamal al Harith, said he’d planned to attend a religious retreat in Pakistan in October 2001 but was ordered to leave the country because of animosity toward Britons. When he tried to drive a truck home via Iran and Turkey, he says, his truck was hijacked at gunpoint and he was handed over to the Taliban, who jailed him and accused him of being a spy. When the Taliban fell after the U.S.-led invasion, he was detained and transported to Guantanamo.

The detainees filed suit in October 2004 against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, and nine other senior military officers. They allege that the Pentagon officials violated the Alien Tort Statute, the Geneva Conventions, the religious freedom law and the Constitution with their harsh treatment.

In upholding a lower court’s rejection of all the claims but those under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the circuit court said that the interrogation tactics, which Rumsfeld first authorized in 2002, were “incidental” to the duties of those who’d been sued.

“It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency,” said Lewis, the detainees’ attorney, “when a court finds that torture is all in a day’s work for the secretary of defense and senior generals. . . . I think the executive is trying to create a black hole so there is no accountability for torture and religious abuse.”

Lewis said his clients intended to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.