Flying into controversy

Malta has been mentioned several times as one of the European states implicated in CIA "extraordinary rendition" operations that have provoked outrage in Europe.

Why does an expression used to acclaim a musician's performance become a politically correct phrase meaning "to seize terrorist suspects in an intelligence operation, detain them and probably torture them in secret prisons"?

Since allegations that the United States holds terrorist suspects in secret prisons surfaced in November 2005, it transpired that the CIA has used European airports for hundreds of "extraordinary renditions" both before and after the September 11 attacks.

On November 2, 2005, The Washington Post published an article entitled CIA Holds Terror Suspects In Secret Prisons, and claimed that the CIA ran "black sites" in eight countries including Thailand, Afghanistan and "several democracies in Eastern Europe".

An American non-governmental organisation, Human Rights Watch, mentions Poland and Romania as the countries hosting secret prisons. Both countries have issued denials, followed by Latvia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Armenia and Bulgaria.

So far, there has been no evidence of the existence of the secret prisons in these countries. But investigations into the claims, mostly by journalists, non-governmental organisations and judiciaries in European countries, have confirmed the allegations.

In the past months growing evidence that secret CIA flights in and out of Europe were made has increased pressure on European governments to investigate whether US officials have used local airports and military bases to transfer terrorists.

As reports on how terrorist suspects in Europe had been intercepted and kidnapped by CIA agents reached the public domain, members of the European Parliament urged the European Commission to investigate the allegations, but EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said it was up to individual governments to investigate the claims.

Faced by media pressure, governments published lists of chartered flights which allegedly flew terrorist suspects from and into Europe on their way to secret prisons where they would be interrogated away from legal scrutiny.

In an interview on the American channel ABC soon after The Washington Post report, CIA director Porter Goss did not deny the existence of the secret prisons in various parts of the world where suspected terrorists were held. He denied, however, that the CIA tortured terrorist suspects.

US government's reassurances

Addressing the European Union in December last year, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice at no point denied the existence of the secret detention centres or the use of European airports to transport terrorist suspects.

Ms Rice reaffirmed the need to resort to "extraordinary renditions" to counter terrorism but categorically denied that the US tortures its detained terrorist suspects.

"We must track down terrorists who seek refuge in areas where governments cannot take effective action, including places where the terrorists cannot in practice be reached by the ordinary processes of law," said the US Secretary of State.

As witnessed in that same speech by Ms Rice, the end which justifies the use of such operations is, in the American authorities' view, the fact that most terrorists are "stateless, owing allegiance only to the extremist cause of transnational terrorism", and that they do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice designed for different needs.

"We consider the captured members of al-Qaida and its affiliates to be unlawful combatants who may be held, in accordance with the law of war, to keep them from killing innocents," Ms Rice said.

The reasoning is perfectly in line with the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, reaffirmed recently US President George W. Bush, according to which America should attack its enemies before they attack the United States.

What the United States has failed to answer is the extent to which the warfare methods - in this case, the so-called "extraordinary renditions" - are justified from a human rights point of view.

As far as Europeans are concerned, their major worry is whether their own governments participated in such operations. It would be outrageous for many Europeans, convinced that the Iraq war was based on sheer fallacy and financial interests, to find out that their own countries collaborated with the US.

Dick Marty, the Swiss MP leading the Council of Europe investigations into the allegations, states in a report called Alleged Secret Detentions In Council Of Europe Member States that it was highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware of the operations given that "hundreds of CIA-chartered flights have passed through numerous European countries".

Mr Marty says: "It is, to say the least, curious that media interest, especially in Europe, suddenly surged after the article in The Washington Post in early November 2005."

His statement is based on the fact that reports on the secret operations involving alleged kidnapping and torture existed before The Washington Post story. Yet the indignation being expressed now had hardly been covered in the European media except for a few exceptions.

Mr Marty goes on to suggest that it may not be in the interest of certain European governments if the whole truth were to be revealed.

CIA flight 'landed in Malta'

As it turned out that private aircraft owned by US companies of "uncertain origins" are also reported to have landed in Malta, The Times asked the US Embassy to confirm whether CIA flights had taken place and whether they were part of a covert CIA operation.

"The United States government does not comment on specific intelligence activities. We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations," replied Jeffrey Anderson, public affairs officer at the US embassy.

According to a report in The Guardian earlier this month, a CIA flight landed here from a base in the UK via Tripoli in December 2003.

Further to that report, L-orizzont published a list gathered by Peter Pilz, a member of the Austrian Green Party, who said at least 71 flights made use of European airports during CIA missions between August 2001 and October 2005.

Mr Anderson said that "as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted in December 2005, for decades, the United States and other countries have used 'renditions' to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to their home country or to other countries where they can be questioned, held, or brought to justice.

"The United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances. It is the policy of the United States, and presumably of any other democracies that use this procedure, to comply with its laws and treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture."

Asked whether such flights breached the sovereignty of independent democratic states, Mr Anderson said the United States had respected - and would continue to respect - the sovereignty of other countries.

On whether such claims tainted the image of the United States in the world as well as the democratic credentials it stands for, he replied: "The United States and many other governments are engaged in a difficult struggle against ruthless, transnational terrorists. Terrorists threaten all people who believe in freedom and democracy. The United States is working closely with allies and partners in Europe and globally to protect people around the world against these adversaries. This cooperation has resulted in foiling a number of deadly plots against cities and citizens in Europe and elsewhere."

According to civil aviation sources, it is close to impossible for the Maltese authorities to know about these kinds of flights since governments have no right to ask about the number of passengers and their identity in the case of private flights.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, private flights are only required to notify a country's airport authorities of their arrival by submitting a flight plan. This is also submitted to Flight Information Regions which aircraft go through.

Unlike commercial flights, private flights need to send the number of passengers on board an aircraft in case of search and rescue operations, if requested by an air traffic control unit.

The Abu Omar case

US authorities have never officially denied extraordinary rendition operations. Cases like that of Hassam Osama Mustafa Nasr, known as Abu Omar, have actually confirmed their existence.

An Egyptian political refugee who was suspected of Islamic militancy, Abu Omar was abducted by the CIA under the eyes of Italian anti-terrorism police. At midday on June 17, 2003, he was seized by the CIA and flown to Egypt from the US air base of Aviano via Ramstein, Germany.

Thanks to investigations by the Milan judiciary and the Italian DIGOS police, it transpired that Abu Omar had been flown to Egypt, tortured, released and arrested again.

Italian investigators established that the presumed leader of the abduction had worked as the American consul in Milan and was in Egypt for two weeks after Abu Omar was handed over to the Egyptians for interrogation.

Abu Omar had been under surveillance by the Italian police who were on the verge of uncovering an activist network operating in Italy. The Milan judiciary investigating the case said the US operation had sabotaged the Italians' anti-terrorist action.

In a Council of Europe report entitled Alleged Secret Detentions On Council Of Europe Member States, rapporteur Dick Marty asked whether it was possible that Italy, one of the United States' allies in Iraq, had not been informed about the operation as the Italian authorities had affirmed.

If this was not the case, the presence of 25 US agents in Italy and the kidnapping of a person who had been granted political asylum should have sparked off a diplomatic incident, or at least triggered a sharp response from the Italians, Mr Marty noted.

A few weeks after Abu Omar's abduction, the CIA tipped off the Italian police that a radical Islamic cleric had mysteriously vanished from Milan and fled to the Balkans. According to Italian court documents, the CIA tip was a deliberate lie and ruse aimed at derailing Italian investigators.

Armando Spataro, Milan's lead prosecutor said: "The kidnapping of Abu Omar was not only a serious crime against Italian sovereignty and human rights, but it also damaged counter-terrorism efforts in Italy and Europe. If Abu Omar had not been kidnapped, he would now be in prison, subject to a regular trial, and we would have probably identified his other accomplices."

Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants against 22 CIA secret agents who are said to have taken part in the operation.

In January, the Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick published a fax intercepted by Swiss intelligence services from the Egyptian European Affairs Ministry to the Egyptian embassy in London referring to the existence of secret detention centres in Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Macedonia and Kosovo.

Counter-terrorism and torture

The Council of Europe investigators concluded that "the current US administration seems to start from the principle that the principles of the rule of law and human rights are incompatible with efficient action against terrorism".

"Extraordinary rendition" and secret detention facilitate the use of degrading treatment and torture, they said.

Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent, admitted knowing that suspects were tortured in Egypt. Giving evidence on condition of anonymity to various journalists including The Washington Post, CIA members were quoted saying: "We don't kick the **** out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the **** out of them".

One official who had supervised the transfer of alleged terrorists told Dana Priest and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post: "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job".

This points to what is referred to as "outsourcing" of torture, mentioned by former CIA agent Robert Baer in an interview with British journalist Stephen Grey in the New Statesman in May 2004. "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."

In the Council of Europe's view, "nothing and no one can justify waiving the principles of the rule of law and respect for human rights and torture, in addition to being an unreliable way of obtaining information, is in any case absolutely prohibited". United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour commented that secret detention was a form of torture in itself for the person detained, who was at the mercy of the detaining authorities, and for the families who faced a situation amounting to that of a missing person.

In the coming days, a Council of Europe commission is expected to give a clearer view of the legal consequences of these practices, and delve into states' responsibility in upholding international law.