- The United States has been secretly sending prisoners
with suspected al-Qaeda connections to countries where torture during interrogation
is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources.
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- Prisoners are being moved to places in Egypt and Jordan
where they can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to
extract information sought by the US.
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- The normal extradition procedures have been bypassed
in the transportation of dozens of prisoners suspected of terrorist connections,
according to a report in the Washington Post, with suspects moved to countries
where the CIA has close ties with the local intelligence services.
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- The report says US intelligence agents have been involved
in a number of interrogations. A CIA spokesman refused to comment on the
allegations on Monday.
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- A State Department spokesman said the US had been "working
very closely with other countries ... It's a global fight against terrorism".
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- "After September 11, these sorts of movements have
been occurring all the time," a diplomat told the Washington Post.
"It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't
do on US soil."
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- Suspects are being sent to a third country rather than
to the US so as to avoid highly publicised cases that could lead to a further
backlash from Islamist extremists, diplomats say.
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- One of the prisoners, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, is allegedly
linked to Richard Reid, the Briton accused of the attempted "shoe
bomb" attack on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in
December. He was flown from Indonesia to Egypt without a court hearing,
after his name appeared on al-Qaeda documents. He remains in custody in
Egypt and has been subjected to interrogation by intelligence agents.
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- An Indonesian Government official said disclosing the
Americans' role would have exposed President Megawati Sukarnoputri to criticism
from Muslim political parties. "We can't be seen to be co-operating
too closely with the United States," the official said.
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- A Yemeni microbiology student has also been flown from
Pakistan to Jordan, and US forces seized five Algerians and a Yemeni in
Bosnia on January 19 and flew them to Guantanamo Bay after the men were
released by the Bosnian supreme court for lack of evidence, and despite
an injunction from the Bosnian human rights chamber that four of them be
allowed to remain there pending further proceedings.
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- Civil rights lawyers based in Los Angeles have tried
unsuccessfully to have Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in US courts or
treated as prisoners of war. The US administration has resisted this, arguing
that those detained were not entitled to be regarded as prisoners of war
because they were terrorists rather than soldiers and were not part of
a recognised army.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/news/0203/13/world/world6.html
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