inside the glass house

Outsourcing torture: rogue states do the job for the West
NEW YORK - When Western nations want their suspected terrorists beaten up and brutally interrogated, they have discovered an easy way out: they simply outsource the job to a group of repressive regimes described as "the fingernail pullers of the world".

Torture, like hi-tech jobs, is now being transferred from Western capitals to the developing world. A coalition of international human rights organisations last week accused seven countries of either transferring -- or attempting to transfer-- some of their prisoners to countries labelled "the most abusive in the world."

All seven countries — the US, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Sweden — are seeking diplomatic assurances that their prisoners will not be tortured if transferred. But the very fact that they are seeking assurances means the credibility of the receiving countries are in doubt.

And the pay-off? Perhaps an increase in economic and military aid, including steadier shipments of torture equipment. Under a notorious policy called "rendition" -- carried out on a limited basis by American intelligence agencies since 1994 and accelerated since the attacks on the US in September 2001-- terrorist suspects have been transferred to countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Uzbekistan for "aggressive methods of persuasion" that are considered illegal in the US.

The irony of it all is that most of these countries are singled out, year in and year out, as habitual human rights violators in the State Department's annual reports. The coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Association for the Prevention of Torture, and International Federation for Human Rights, says these are also countries known to routinely torture prisoners.

The two most cited cases of rendition are those of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian engineer, and Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian holding Australian citizenship. Arar was arrested as a suspected terrorist at New York's Kennedy airport and deported to Syria while transiting to Canada. Subsequently released by the Syrian authorities, Arar accused the Syrians of brutal interrogation, including torture.

Habib, the second alleged terrorist suspect, has accused the United States of not only torturing him at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but also of transferring him to Egypt where he was beaten up in prison.

In a report released last week, Human Rights Watch documented over 63 cases in which so-called "Islamic militants" were transferred to Egypt for detention and interrogation. Since the terrorist attacks on the US, the total number sent to Egypt could be as high as 200.

In a newspaper interview last January, US President George W. Bush was unequivocal in denying US use of torture and outsourcing of torture. "Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture," he said.

But several delegates at the recently-concluded meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, said the US had lost its moral authority to criticise other nations, judging by the widely publicised torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and at Guantanamo Bay.

Last week, the human rights coalition also appealed for action by the UN Committee Against Torture currently in session in Geneva. Canada, one of the countries accused of this practice of transferring prisoners, is due to submit its own periodic report on torture to the committee's current session.

Last week, the US submitted its own periodic report to the committee saying it is opposed to torture, despite the widespread abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. Torture could be justified "under no circumstance whatsoever, including war, the threat of war, internal political stability," the US report said. The 200-page report would be discussed when the UN committee meets again in November.

In their defence, the US and other nations say they have received diplomatic assurances that transferred prisoners will not be subject to torture. But the coalition argues that the perceived need for assurances is in itself an acknowledgment that a risk of torture and ill treatment exists in the receiving country.

Moreover, the assurances are based on trust that a receiving state will uphold its promise not to ill-treat the person upon return when the state's record of torture demonstrates there is no basis for such trust.

The irony is not lost at a time when Bush has unveiled his ambitious programme to bring democracy to the world at large. Striking a note of sarcasm, one Asian diplomat says: "If Bush's proposal to convert the world's repressive regimes to multi-party democracies becomes a reality, the US will run out of countries where prisoners could be tortured."

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