Italy’s CIA Terrorists Crackdown

An Italian court sentenced 22 CIA operatives, including former Milan station chief Robert Lady, and one U.S. Air Force colonel in absentia for the 2003 abduction of Muslim cleric Hassan Moustafa Osama Nasr (or Abu Omar) in Milan. Nasr was flown to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured. Why would Italy, a U.S. ally, threaten to jail CIA agents for nabbing a suspected terrorist?

Italy is laying down the law: Why did the CIA use “extraordinary rendition” in an allied nation like Italy? asks Annie Lowrey in Foreign Policy. The “somewhat queasy” answer is: because it could. “At the time, the CIA operated in extralegal channels with impunity.” But times have changed, and the Italian court is “ensuring the CIA knows there’s no impunity now.”
“Italian court convicts CIA agents in absentia”

No impunity for Americans—but for Italians? The Italian prosecutor certainly spun this as a victory for “Italian laws,” says Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. But then why did three high-ranking Italians implicated in the case get off scot-free? Count me unimpressed. “Convicting a bunch of foreigners is easy. It’s holding your own people to account that’s hard.”
“Italy’s rendition trial”

The CIA gets off easy, too: The verdict is also “where the damage ends for the CIA,” says Jeff Stein in Foreign Policy. None of the agents are likely to see the inside of an Italian jail cell—although, with European arrest warrants out for their arrest, they “can forget about spending the summer in Provence.” But the last laugh may go to Nasr: for compensation, he could be awarded the “title to an Italian country house that Lady bought for retirement.”
“Rendered guilty”

Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal and Dick Cheney

Seymour Hersh says that Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in Afghanistan.

In an interview with GulfNews on May 12, 2009 Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, said that there is a special unit called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that does high-value targeting of men that are known to be involved in anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning such activities.

According to Hersh, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was headed by former US vice president Dick Cheney and the former head of JSOC, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal who has just been named the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan.

McChrystal, a West Pointer who became a Green Beret not long after graduation, following a stint as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division, is currently director of Staff at the Pentagon, the executive to Joint staff to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.

On July 22, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled “No blood, no foul” about American torture practices at three facilities in Iraq. One of them was Camp Nama, which was operated by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), under the direction of then Major General Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal was officially based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, but he was a frequent visitor to Camp Nama and other Special Forces bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where forces under his command were based.

An interrogator at Camp Nama known as Jeff described locking prisoners in shipping containers for 24 hours at a time in extreme heat; exposing them to extreme cold with periodic soaking in cold water; bombardment with bright lights and loud music; sleep deprivation; and severe beatings.

When he and other interrogators went to the colonel in charge and expressed concern that this kind of treatment was not legal, and that they might be investigated by the military’s Criminal Investigation Division or the International Committee of the Red Cross, the colonel told them he had “this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there’s no way that the Red Cross could get in.”

In the July 2, 2006 report, When Human Rights Watch asked whether the interrogator knew whether the colonel was receiving orders or pressures to use the abusive tactics, Jeff said that his understanding was that there was some form of pressure to use aggressive techniques coming from higher up the chain of command; however neither he nor other interrogators were briefed on the particular source.

“We really didn’t know too much about it. We knew that we were only like a few steps away in the chain of command from the Pentagon, but it was a little unclear, especially to the interrogators who weren’t really part of that task force.”

The interrogator said that he did see Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of US Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, visiting the Nama facility on several occasions. “I saw him a couple of times. I know what he looks like.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the international body charged under international law with monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and it, therefore, has the right to inspect all facilities where people are detained in a country that is at war or under military occupation.

To hide prisoners or facilities from the ICRC or to deny access to them is a serious war crime. But many US prisons in Iraq have held “ghost” prisoners whose imprisonment has not been reported to the ICRC, and these “ghosts” have usually been precisely the ones subjected to the worst torture. Camp Nama, run by McChrystal’s JSOC, was an entire “ghost” facility.

The decision by Obama’s administration to appoint General McChrystal as the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan and retaining the military commission for the US war-on-terror detainees held in the Guantanamo Bay prison are the latest examples of the new US administration walking in Bush’s foot steps with regards to torture and denial of habeas corpus.

Former US officials claim CIA was to hire assassination teams modeled after the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad’s targeted killing specialist squads.

On Tuesday, Newsweek quoted some former senior officials as saying that in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the former administration approached the Central Intelligence Agency to form the teams.

The officials, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the White House broached the issue with CIA’s espionage wing, the Directorate of Operations.

The program was recently exposed by the agency’s director Leon Panetta, who claimed that he had stopped it last month upon hearing about it.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal quoted intelligence sources as saying that the program also included capturing or killing al-Qaeda operatives.

“There was some initial involvement by the CIA in this program early on and it was described to me by US intelligence officials as a modern-day Phoenix program that was during the Vietnam War. The CIA and US military special forces cooperated to assassinate (the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam) Viet Cong leaders,” investigative journalist Wayne Madsen told Russia Today earlier on Wednesday.

The Israeli model for the brigades were Mossad’s infamous ‘Wrath Of God’ teams who employed themselves in taking down the suspects for the killing of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. The summer event witnessed the capture and murder of the members of the Israeli Olympic team.

Accusing Palestinians of committing the murders, the Mossad men trawled through Europe for suspects, killing an innocent Moroccan man by mistake in one surge.

Pete Hoekstra on the House Intelligence Committee claims little money was spent on the project that allegedly never became fully operational.

Newsweek concluded that the plans, however, never completely hit cold storage and continued to be refurbished so the president can use them when necessary.

The US has interfered in Afghanistan since 1960s and increased its role in 1980s after the former Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979, a Pakistani journalist says.

“The US will pursue its plans for Afghanistan with the help of Taliban and al-Qaeda until 2012 in order to achieve its objectives against interests of China and Iran. The US will unveil its [ultimate] plans only when it achieves its objectives,” Jang Daily’s Javid Rashid told IRIB.

He claimed that the US and Pakistan would continue their cooperation in Afghanistan in the future. “I see Afghanistan’s future as very dim.”

According to Rashid, the US and the Pakistani army jointly organized pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan because they want Pakistan under the current government to retain its chaotic situation.

“As they have introduced al-Qaeda as an emblem of terror in the Muslim world, they have also established Taliban in an effort to weaken Pakistan,” Rashid noted.

Qari Zainuddin (centre), surrounded by his armed guard in northwestern Pakistan

A tribal leader who earlier defected from Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and revealed the militants group’s ties with the US and Israel has been shot dead.

The assassination of Qari Zainuddin comes days after he revealed that their comrade was pursuing a US-Israeli agenda across the violence-wracked country.

Zainuddin, a 26-year-old rising tribesman who had called Mehsud “an American agent” was killed by a gunman in northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday.

Zainuddin, who broke away from Mehsud, was also increasingly critical of Mehsud’s use of suicide bombings targeting civilians.

In an interview with local media the defector said that Mehsud had established strong links with Israeli intelligence services, which were destabilizing the nuclear armed country. “These people (Mehsud and his men) are working against Islam.”

Mehsud, a warlord in his late 30s, has claimed responsibility for dozens of devastating string attacks on both civilians and security forces throughout the feared region.

Insurgents have stepped up their attacks on civilian and religious centers in major cities across Pakistan, which has fueled anti-Taliban sentiments among the Pakistani people.

The US invaded Afghanistan more than seven years ago to allegedly eradicate insurgency and arrest Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.

The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 has resulted in the spread of violence into neighboring Pakistan. Taliban militants have turned the restive tribal belt between the two neighbors into a scene of daily

violence.

http://unitedstatescentralcommand.com/2009/11/05/colors_pentagon_cia_fbi_blog.aspx