APNewsBreak: UK torture panel to study rendition (AP)

LONDON – A British inquiry will investigate CIA prisoner transfer practices as part of a probe into claims that terrorism suspects were tortured after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, officials confirmed Wednesday.

The three-member panel, commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron to carry out a sweeping review of the country's role in the "war on terror," will scrutinize alleged British complicity in the secret U.S. rendition program.

Officials confirmed that the inquiry could see the heads of Britain's main spy agencies questioned in public for the first time.

The panel won't seek evidence from the U.S. or foreign allies, disappointing campaigners who hoped the study would be the most thorough yet of alleged murky practices by Western military and intelligence officials.

"Without a comprehensive examination of rendition, the drip-drip of allegations will continue. Far better to deal with it all now, draw a line and move on," said Conservative Party lawmaker Andrew Tyrie, who leads a parliamentary group that has led calls for greater scrutiny of the use of so-called extraordinary rendition — which involved the beyond-the-law transfer of terrorism suspects from country to country by the CIA.

Details of the inquiry's remit were announced publicly on Wednesday. Before the release, two people familiar with the issue had disclosed to The Associated Press that the rendition program would be scrutinized.

Human rights advocates allege that the CIA used the program to outsource torture of detainees to countries where it is permitted.

In a 2007 probe conducted on behalf of the Council of Europe, Swiss politician Dick Marty accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.

Last year, Cameron ordered former appeals court judge Peter Gibson to lead a study into alleged British complicity in torture and mistreatment of terrorist suspects held overseas.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said the inquiry was necessary to "clear the stain from our reputation as a country."

Britain has previously acknowledged that Diego Garcia, a British atoll in the Indian Ocean that hosts a U.S. military base, was twice used by the U.S. as a refueling stop during the 2002 secret transfers of two terrorism suspects.

It has also said that two suspected Pakistani militants detained by British troops in Iraq in 2004 were handed over to the U.S., and later covertly transferred to Afghanistan.

"The inquiry will be looking at whether U.K. government personnel were aware of, or involved in, the rendition of detainees from one country to another, and whether U.K. airports and U.K. airspace were used for this purpose," the panel said in a statement issued following publication of its remit.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, a former head of domestic spy agency MI5 who retired in 2007, has said previously that she believes the U.S. deliberately misled its allies over its handling of detainees.

In a document outlining its plans, the inquiry said spy agency chiefs and other key witnesses would be questioned in public unless to do so would compromise national security.

British spy chiefs are rarely seen in public and unlike their U.S. counterparts give evidence to legislative scrutiny committees in private.

"The heads and former heads of the security and intelligence agencies will be invited to give evidence on these issues, as far as possible, in public," the inquiry said.

Junior spies will be questioned in private, but ministers and other public officials will be expected to testify in public — unless dealing with sensitive matters of national security.

"The potential for embarrassment to these witnesses will not justify secrecy," the inquiry said.

Cameron has said the inquiry will not begin until police complete an investigation opened in 2009 into allegations that an intelligence officer with the country's MI6 spy agency was complicit in the mistreatment of detainees overseas.

Some rights groups have complained that the final decision on whether or not evidence studied by the inquiry can be made public will be taken by senior government officials — not the panel itself.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of rights group Reprieve, said the decision would effectively "give America a veto on much of what should be public."

The inquiry confirmed that — despite calls from some campaigners — it would not examine instances where detainees captured by British military forces were moved to other locations inside the same country. Britain's defense ministry is already studying those cases, it said.

Last year, Britain paid out settlements to a number of former Guantanamo Bay detainees who alleged U.K. complicity in their harsh treatment overseas, though the government did not admit any liability.

___

Britain's detainee inquiry: http://www.detaineeinquiry.org.uk/

__

David Stringer can be reached at twitter.com/david_stringer

View the original article here

APNewsBreak: Norway questions NYC subway plotters (AP)

By BJOERN H. AMLAND and KARL RITTER Bjoern H. Amland And Karl Ritter – Tue Jun 21, 2:48 pm ET

OSLO, Norway – Security officials investigating a terror plot in Norway will seek testimony in New York this week from three American al-Qaida recruits turned government witnesses, defense lawyers told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The Norwegians are preparing terror charges in a case that investigators have linked to foiled plots to bomb the New York subway and a shopping mall in Manchester, England.

The defense lawyers told the AP that Norway's Police Security Service will question Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay, who have pleaded guilty in the foiled 2009 subway plot. They will also seek testimony from Bryant Neal Vinas, an American al-Qaida recruit who has cooperated with U.S. authorities since his capture in Pakistan.

Trond Hugubakken, a spokesman for Norway's Police Security Service, or PST, confirmed that Norwegian investigators were traveling to New York this week to talk to people in the "Zazi case," but wouldn't give details.

The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, which prosecuted all three men, declined comment on Tuesday.

Norwegian authorities last year arrested three suspects accused of plotting a terror attack against a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

Intelligence officials believe the main suspect, Mikael Davud, was in contact with an al-Qaida operative in Pakistan who also communicated with the New York and Manchester plotters. Davud, a Chinese Muslim who came to Norway in 1999, also is believed to have traveled to an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan about two years ago.

Davud's defense lawyer, Carl Konow Rieber-Mohn, told AP he expects Norwegian investigators to try to get testimony from the three Americans that backs up the Pakistan link. While Davud has admitted to some of the terror allegations, he denies having traveled to al-Qaida camps in Pakistan.

Rieber-Mohn said he was already in New York and would be present during the questioning.

"If these interrogations are going to be valid in a Norwegian court, the defendant's lawyers must be present to be able to ask control questions," he said.

Davud was arrested in July last year along with Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd and Uzbek national David Jakobsen, who has since been released but remains a suspect in the investigation. Norwegian authorities also seized bomb-making material.

Bujak and Davud have confessed to plotting terrorism. Bujak said their planned target was a newspaper that caricatured Muhammad while Davud claims the target was the Chinese Embassy in Oslo. Investigators doubt Davud's version, saying he wasn't able to show them the embassy's location on a city map.

Bujak's lawyer Arvid Sjoedin, who was not traveling to New York, said he believed the testimony would primarily deal with Davud. The trial is expected to start in Oslo in October.

___

Ritter reported from Stockholm. Associated Press writer Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.

View the original article here

APNewsBreak: US says bin Laden knew of Europe plot (AP)

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER and KIMBERLY DOZIER, Associated Press Kirsten Grieshaber And Kimberly Dozier, Associated Press – Wed May 25, 5:03 pm ET

BERLIN – The United States has told Germany that evidence pulled from Osama bin Laden's hideout shows the terror chief was linked to a plot to attack targets in Europe last year, a senior German official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Two U.S. officials also told the AP that bin Laden had advised Europe-based militants to attack in unspecified mainland European countries just before Christmas. The officials offered no details.

Separately, bin Laden encouraged multiple attacks on Danish targets because of disparaging references to the Muslim prophet Mohammed in Danish media, the U.S. officials said.

European security officials said earlier this month that they'd seen very little of the information from the May 2 raid on bin Laden's hideout, but the Americans have begun sharing more information with intelligence agencies in Europe.

The German official said U.S. officials had told their German counterparts that information retrieved from the Pakistani house where bin Laden was killed shows that senior al-Qaida member Sheikh Yunis al Mauritania was in contact with bin Laden about the Europe plot.

A 29-year-old Moroccan terror suspect was arrested last month in the German city of Duesseldorf with letters between him and al Mauritania about planned terror attacks in Europe, the official told the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

He and other European security officials said they have not seen evidence to suggest that bin Laden was involved in planning the attacks.

"We now know he was a lot more operational than previously thought — and there's some interesting information that has come out on this — but whether this means he was involved in the actual planning or advising remains unclear," said a European security official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive intelligence information.

A senior French security official said Wednesday that the U.S. have also shared some of the intelligence collected from bin Laden's compound with them, but so far he has not seen any evidence linking bin Laden to the 2010 Europe terror plot.

"I don't know what the Americans are sharing with the Germans," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because his information is privileged.

In September, intelligence gleaned from a terror suspect detained in Afghanistan prompted heightened security in Britain, France and Germany.

Germany raised its security threat level in November after officials said they had received information from their own and foreign intelligence services, including in the U.S., that indicated a sleeper cell of some 20 to 25 people may have been planning an attack somewhere in Europe. Later, Germany also received information on possible separate attacks at Christmas or New Year's.

Germany eased the threat level this year.

The first link to bin Laden appears to have been uncovered with the April arrest of a Moroccan named Abdeladim El-Kebir. At the time he was taken into custody, German officials said el-Kebir and two or three other suspects were working on making a shrapnel-laden bomb in Germany to attack a crowded place such as a bus in spring or summer 2011.

The message exchange with al Mauritania found at his home also indicated that he belonged to the group that American security officials last year warned may be plotting attacks in Europe, the German official told the AP.

The German official suggested that the letter contained some indication that bin Laden had been kept abreast of the plot to attack Europe in fall 2010.

A recent U.S. security briefing on the bin Laden house evidence "basically confirmed to us what we had already found in the letter exchange between El-Kebir and (al Mauritania)," the official said.

On the day of El-Kebir's arrest, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich released a statement saying the suspects had been under surveillance since November, when Germany increased security. He added authorities had accumulated enough evidence to launch an official criminal investigation last month.

After his arrest, German intelligence officials said el-Kebir received the assignment to carry out a bombing from a high-ranking al-Qaida member early last year. At the time they did not identify the al-Qaida leader, and did not say he was also thought to be connected to earlier European plots.

El-Kebir left Germany in early 2010 and trained in an al-Qaida camp in Waziristan near the Afghan-Pakistan border, and returned last year to carry out the attack.

He had at one time resided in Germany on a student visa but later returned illegally after abandoning his studies.

___

Dozier reported from Washington. Contributing to this report were Paisley Dodds in London, Jamey Keaten in Paris, Karl Ritter in Stockholm and Al Clendenning in Madrid.

View the original article here