" not tourist flights": first official UN grilling of US over torture

[dajoki]

U.S. terror stances get UN's close look
Reuters, The Associated Press
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/04/news/cia.php
FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2006


BRUSSELS The United States will come under official UN grilling over its compliance with the global ban on torture Friday for the first time since it launched its war on terror, with questions focusing on allegations of secret CIA prisons and flights transferring suspects for possible torture in other countries.

The UN Committee Against Torture, the global body's watchdog for a 22- year-old treaty forbidding prisoner abuse, will quiz U.S. officials on a series of issues ranging from Washington's interpretation of the absolute ban on torture to its interrogation methods in prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay.

The United States, like the 140 other nations that have signed the Convention Against Torture, must submit reports to the committee to show it is applying the rules.

The U.S. mission to the UN's European headquarters in Geneva said that it has sent a written reply to the committee's questions, but that it would refrain from commenting before its sessions with the committee Friday and Monday.

Its team of 25 for the hearings will be headed by the State Department legal adviser John Bellinger, and includes officials from the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments.

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Bellinger was responding to an investigation by the European Parliament which, while producing no firm evidence, concluded last month that more than 1,000 CIA flights had transited the EU and that the CIA had been responsible on several occasions for kidnapping people and illegally detaining them on EU soil.

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Claudio Fava, author of the EU parliamentary report, said that the suggestion was not that all flights carried prisoners, but "some" had been used for prisoners and often had routes linking Guantánamo, Kabul and Baghdad.

"These were not tourist flights," he said.