U.N. Finds Sweden Broke Torture Convention

[Rose Siding]

GENEVA -- Sweden broke international law when it sent a terror suspect home to Egypt despite his protests that he would be tortured there, a United Nations human rights body found Friday.

Sweden's Migration Minister Barbro Holmberg said the government has not had time to review the finding but is taking it seriously. "We will analyze this carefully to see what guidance this can give for the future," Holmberg told the Swedish news agency TT.
...
The U.N. Convention against Torture, which Sweden was found to have violated, holds that no signatory shall "expel, return or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."
...
The Swedish government acknowledged both asylum seekers had a well-founded fear of being persecuted if returned to Egypt. However, the men were excluded from refugee status based on evidence that they were associated with Islamist groups responsible for acts of terrorism.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-un-sweden-egypt-terror-suspect,0,5612435.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[Placebo]

1. No! Not Old Europe!

Say it isn't so!

:o

[Kagemusha]

2. This is the modern equivalent of sending Jews to WWII Germany?

Just wondering, since the Swiss have been vilified for a long time over the issue. I refuse to even try to justify it either.

[Paintedlady]

3. I sent a link to my brother

He lives in Sweden and should know what is going on about that case over there.
I live here in the US, but I seem to remember that the US came in with their plane and picked those people up, I bet there was a lot of pressure to give them up. I'm pretty sure it has caused a lot of outrage among the population, and that the Prime Minister has lost some support over it.
When my brother answers I will post again.

[gratuitous]

4. Is this a signal to the US?

After all, we detained Maher Arar and shipped him off to Syria for a little extraordinary rendition back in 2003. And I doubt that the U.S. authorities can make a colorable claim that they didn't know that Syria would torture Mr. Arar.

Or will the U.S. blow off its treaty obligations again when they become inconvenient?

[librechik]

5. Way to set a precedent, UN

now on to the big villains in the piece, the US with "hundreds" of "extraordinary renditions."

yeah, right

[LynnTheDem]

6. SWEDEN?????!!

:wow:

[Briar]

8. Sweden, the UK, everywhere

hatred of immigrants is driving so-called "centrist" (please the lowest common denominator among the voters) governments into the arms of the racists.

[TheGunslinger]

7. Didn't Egypt just admit a few dozen were sent there by the U.S.??

[Stockholm]

9. Well done UN!

This is the result of the US rendition programme and a very weak Swedish Government. Where are our Galloways'? We need a new Olof Palme.

[maddezmom]

10. WP - New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action

New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action
Probe Finds 'Rendition' Of Terror Suspects Illegal

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A01

STOCKHOLM -- The CIA Gulfstream V jet touched down at a small airport west of here just before 9 p.m. on a subfreezing night in December 2001. A half-dozen agents wearing hoods that covered their faces stepped down from the aircraft and hurried across the tarmac to take custody of two prisoners, suspected Islamic radicals from Egypt.

Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners' clothes, including their underwear, according to newly released Swedish government documents and eyewitness statements. They probed inside the men's mouths and ears and examined their hair before dressing the pair in sweat suits and draping hoods over their heads. The suspects were then marched in chains to the plane, where they were strapped to mattresses on the floor in the back of the cabin.


So began an operation the CIA calls an "extraordinary rendition," the forcible and highly secret transfer of terrorism suspects to their home countries or other nations where they can be interrogated with fewer legal protections.

The practice has generated increasing criticism from civil liberties groups; in Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month probe into the case recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to "degrading and inhuman treatment" and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil.

~snip~
more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html

[C_U_L8R]

11. Hello Hello UN !!

Excuse me... we could use a war crimes tribunal over here !!

[jazzjunkysue]

12. Hello! OUR CIA moved these two, and then our GOP blamed Sweden!

The names are off by one letter: Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed Alzery in the Newsday article claiming Sweeden broke the convention, and Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Zery in the Washington Post article claiming the CIA took these guys to Egypt.

Wonder if anyone in our government has figured out that we're blaming sweden for something our CIA did?

CAN THIS GET DUMBER????????

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html

New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action
Probe Finds 'Rendition' Of Terror Suspects Illegal

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A01

STOCKHOLM -- The CIA Gulfstream V jet touched down at a small airport west of here just before 9 p.m. on a subfreezing night in December 2001. A half-dozen agents wearing hoods that covered their faces stepped down from the aircraft and hurried across the tarmac to take custody of two prisoners, suspected Islamic radicals from Egypt.

Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners' clothes, including their underwear, according to newly released Swedish government documents and eyewitness statements. They probed inside the men's mouths and ears and examined their hair before dressing the pair in sweat suits and draping hoods over their heads. The suspects were then marched in chains to the plane, where they were strapped to mattresses on the floor in the back of the cabin.
snip
At 9:47 p.m., less than an hour after its arrival at Bromma Airport, the jet took off on a five-hour flight to Cairo, where the prisoners, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Zery, were handed over to Egyptian security officials.

More conflicts arose after the plane landed. One Swedish officer walked up the steps of the aircraft to greet the crew and was surprised to see that the agents -- a half-dozen or so Americans and two Egyptians -- were wearing hoods with semi-opaque fabric around the face, even though the small airport was essentially deserted.

"I told them that you don't need to wear hoods because there is no one here," the officer recalled in his statement to investigators. The foreign agents ignored him.

The two Egyptians later told lawyers, relatives and Swedish diplomats that they were subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture soon after their forced return to their country.

,

[IChing]

13. This is a good angle to use "U.N. Finds US Broke Torture Convention"

It brings out the real asshole behind it without using the real headline




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