NEW YORK, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- The story of a suspected Australian terrorist being flown from U.S. custody in Pakistan to a prison cell in Egypt where he was tortured has recently brought to light the practice among the CIA and FBI officials called "rendition."
This involves the transferring of terror suspects from the restraints of U.S. law to allied countries where interrogations are often brutal and where inhuman savagery is routinely employed.
The practice of rendition belongs to both the CIA and the FBI, according to former federal law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI often uses a U.S. Air Force jet to transfer suspects, while the CIA uses a Gulfstream jet registered to a Delaware corporation, according to a former CIA official.
This same source said that since Sept. 11, the CIA has transferred "just under 40 terrorist suspects" to such countries as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt -- moderate Arab allies with poor civil and human rights records and where the jailing of terrorists has often been used, not against criminals, but simply to get rid of political rivals and opponents, this source said.
The CIA refused to comment.
Although current news accounts almost without exception picture rendition as negative, in fact it has a positive side: It is used by the CIA and FBI to gain custody of major suspects from countries that do not have an extradition treaty with the United States, thus enabling U.S. intelligence agencies to interrogate them and bring them to the United States for a fair trail and imprisonment if convicted, several serving and former U.S. intelligence officials said.
The case that brought the practice to light -- that of 48-year-old Mamdouh Habib, detained in Pakistan and interrogated in several jails by Americans -- turned ugly when he was transported by CIA agents and flown to Egypt in the above-named Gulfstream.
Habib remained there for more than three years, where he endured unspeakable beatings and torture, these accounts said.
Serving U.S. intelligence officials had no idea why Habib, described by an Australian Embassy official "as a person of security interest" who had not violated any laws, was chosen for rendition.
"It makes no sense," said former chief of CIA Afghanistan operations Milt Bearden. "Any time you send a foreign national to a place where he knows he's going to have his fingernails ripped out, he'll sign any sort of confession, he'll make any sort of admission. You don't get intelligence worth squat as a result."
A serving U.S. intelligence official agreed. "You don't torture to get information," he said.
Some renditions appear to be merely a form of revenge.
According to Yossef Bodansky, an adviser to Congress and an al-Qaida expert, in 1998, after U.S. officials consulted with the government of Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia launched a major offensive against Egyptian Islamist networks headed by al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden's second in command, Ayman Zawahiri.
One target of the push was a close colleague of Zawahiri, Isam Abdul Abdul-Tawwab Abdul Alim, who was arrested in Sofia where he had been living legally with his wife and children.
According to Bodansky, Abdul Alim was taken for two days to a detention center and repatriated to Egypt "under American auspices" where he "very probably perished."
Then four Islamic charity workers in Tirana were arrested on suspicion of being terrorists. The arrests were prompted by U.S. officials, said Bodansky. Along with a third suspect, the group was expelled from Albania and sent to Egypt "courtesy of the CIA, where "it's presumed they perished as well," Bodansky said.
"These are the actions of a national security state, and the United States has to decide if that is what it wants to become," said Milt Bearden. "I've been resisting that idea for 30 years. Once we become a national security state, it's goodbye to the America that was to be that shining city on the hill."
But former CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson said that good things can come out of renditions, noting that Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted of having been behind the first World Center Trade Bombing and the man who allegedly planned to blow up 11 U.S. commercial airliners simultaneously in flight over the Pacific, and his uncle, the, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, suspected of directing the Sept. 11 attacks, were transferred from Pakistan, where they were captured by Pakistani and U.S. officials.
In the case of Yousef, a member of his cell, Ishtiaque Parker, grew sick of Yousef's grisly schemes and alerted officials of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service. When Yousef was arrested at 9 a.m. in a safe house paid for by bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was in the apartment below and heard the "ruckus," according to Tom Corrigan, a former member of the FBI's bin Laden squad,
Corrigan said that 22 agents accompanied Yousef, who was taken from Pakistan on an unmarked U.S. Air Force jet and flown to New York and the jurisdiction of the U.S. Attorney, and questioned on the way by FBI experts.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, however, was transferred to a secret location.
"I think the greatest mistake of this administration has been that they have ignored the expertise of the FBI in these matters," said Johnson. "The FBI is enormously skilled in extracting information from people in a non-threatening way.
"Instead, this administration has given control to U.S. Special Forces and the U.S. military, who frankly don't have a clue. Look at Abu Ghraib. It's dispiriting."
