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08 May 2006

U.S. Says CIA Flights Overstated, Welcomes Ideas for Guantanamo

"We do not outsource torture," State's Bellinger tells journalists in Belgium

By Vince Crawley
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – The great majority of CIA flights questioned by Europeans were not carrying suspected terrorist detainees, says a top State Department official, who also told journalists in Brussels, Belgium, May 4 that the United States would welcome international suggestions on alternatives to the Guantanamo Bay facility.

The allegations of U.S. wrongdoing undermine close cooperation between the U.S. and European intelligence agencies that actively are working together to apprehend militant terrorists and prevent future attacks, said John Bellinger, the State Department’s senior legal adviser.

There have been reports by European journalists that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is connected to hundreds of flights that passed through Europe since September 2001, with at least some of them carrying suspected terrorists in U.S. custody being transferred from one country to another.

“We do not outsource torture,” Bellinger said during a roundtable with European journalists. He suggested that very few of the CIA’s many flights through Europe have carried detainees.  He also suggested that the practice of intercountry transfer, known as rendition, has been used much less frequently, if at all, in the past two years.

Bellinger met with reporters in Brussels while en route to Vienna, Austria, where on May 5 he addressed the U.N. Committee Against Torture to deliver a report required every four years for nations that are members of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. (See related article.)

The issue of CIA flights dominated Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Europe in December 2005, and the topic still is discussed frequently when senior U.S. officials visit Europe. (See related article.)

“There have not been thousands of flights,” Bellinger told the European reporters.  “There have been, as we have said, a very few cases of rendition. … The suggestion that that there have been large numbers [of flights] or that this allegedly large number of flights have had detainees on them is simply an absurd allegation.” (See related article.)

The suggestion that intelligence flights “are somehow engaged in illegal activity really undermines the cooperation between the United States and Europe,” Bellinger said.

“Many of these flights that have occurred may simply be carrying analysts for intelligence agencies to cooperate with one another, or other officials who are engaged in counterterrorism cooperation,” he said. “They may be carrying forensic evidence that will be shared with European partners.”

Bellinger said U.S. authorities “thought very seriously about trying to deny the individual allegations [about intelligence flights] because so many were wrong,” but ultimately concluded that “it’s simply not possible to get into the business of confirming or denying specifics.”

The details of the flights made public in the news media indicate “an extremely small number from a number of years back have been involved in renditions,” Bellinger said. “I think any reasonable person looking at those facts would conclude that the allegations to the contrary are just simply overblown.”

He also said it was worth noting that “despite a good deal of digging by every journalist in Europe, that the last allegation of a rendition was something like three years ago.”

In the past, the United States has used renditions to bring someone to justice in the U.S. court system. In other cases, Bellinger said, renditions are involved in complex multinational situations.

“Let’s assume a country finds a member of al-Qaida who is trying to cross into that country,” Bellinger said. “They picked them up for an immigration violation and they’re prepared to expel them, but they notify other countries such as the United States that they have picked this person up. And we find that they’re in fact a national of some third country, and that third country says ‘that is one of our nationals, we are prepared to take that individual back.’”

For example, Bellinger said, the person in question may be wanted in connection with a terrorist act or may be a suspected member of a terrorist cell.  “They say we’re prepared to take that person back, but we don’t have an extradition treaty with the first country, and moreover, we don’t have any way ourselves of bringing that person back.”

QUESTIONS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

He said the international community must ask, “is it better to simply let a person suspected of terrorism who has been picked up somewhere around the world, simply disappear to perhaps commit a terrorist act again? Or … is it better to have the person returned to the country of their nationality or to a country in which they’re wanted?”

“That’s the reason … why a rendition may be a useful tool in fighting terrorists,” he said, adding that the United States has the resources to move suspects from one country to another.

Bellinger also said the United States is “acutely aware of the concerns that have been raised both in Europe and around the world about Guantanamo.” 

A number of critics have called for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he said, but none has suggested an alternative.

The camp is populated by people captured in combat and intelligence operations who were not part of any internationally recognized or legitimate military force, who have been trained in terrorist techniques at al-Qaida camps and who continue to pose a threat to the populations of many countries, Bellinger said.

“We do not have many countries in the world [that] are stepping up to say this is a problem for the international community,” he said.

“We have been looking for good alternatives. We welcome the assistance of the international community in trying to see this as a common problem,” he said. “We would welcome good suggestions from other countries as to what should be done with these individuals rather than to simply say, ‘Guantanamo should be closed.’”

A transcript of Bellinger's remarks is available on the U.S. Mission to the European Union Web site.

For additional information, see Detainee Issues.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)