CIA `renditions' of terror suspects cause furor in European nations

[struggle4progress]

BY JOHN CREWDSON
Chicago Tribune

STRASBOURG, France - The cases of Abu Omar, a radical Muslim snatched by the CIA under the noses of the Milan police and flown secretly to Egypt, and Khalid el-Masri, a German national forcibly transported by that same agency from Macedonia to an Afghan prison by mistake, have propelled what once seemed a settled debate over human rights to the center of the European political stage.

It is difficult to name a Western European nation that has not announced some kind of investigation into whether the United States has been using its airports or airspace to ferry terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan for interrogations.

"Renditions," as the CIA calls that practice, have become an incendiary issue in Sweden, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and even tiny Malta.

A report that the CIA secretly detained high-level al-Qaida operatives in Eastern Europe has caused additional turmoil in Poland and Romania, considered the most likely host nations. <snip>

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/world/13538778.htm

[soothsayer]

1. Hey, you didn't forget Poland! Good for you.(My poor motherland.

First death camps, now cia gulags. yeesh.)

[elehhhhna]

2. They DID forget the Netherlands

[Lerkfish]

3. beyond all the obscene implications of this we already know...

like WHY ARE WE DOING TORTURE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

I also wonder about the outrageous risks cavalierly taken against "host" countries, if these detainees were in fact terrorists (which I tend to doubt), by transporting them through countries unaware of the nature of the flights.

If they WERE terrorists, and their network knew of their locations, each "host" country had an extremely elevated threat of potential attack.
Imagine, if the plane were fueling in, say, Norway, and the airport was bombed, and Norway did not even know it had a "terrorist" on the tarmac....???

Imagine if Egypt did the same thing to the US, routing terrorist suspects through LaGuardia, and the whole airport got blown up? how would the US handle NOT KNOWING ABOUT IT?

sheesh, I sometimes feel we are being governed by the keystone cops.

[izzie]

4. Funny thinking as if this will make us safe then they do this

Let 1 million pass into the USA with out papers. Sounds like boys playing with high cost toys for the CIA but the real bad guys will come in over the Mexican line or maybe Canada, if they are not already here. A job super agents and the likes of Bush is not interested in.