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"Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong; they are the ones to attain felicity".
(surah Al-Imran,ayat-104)
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User Name: Noman
Full Name: Noman Zafar
User since: 1/Jan/2007
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WASHINGTON - President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged the existence of previously secret CIA prisons around the world and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects — including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks — have been transferred from the system to Guantanamo Bay for trials.
He said the “small number” of detainees that have been kept in CIA custody include people responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in addition to the 2001 attacks.
“The most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists themselves,” Bush said in a White House speech with families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks making up part of the audience. “It has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held in secret, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts.”
The announcement from Bush is the first time the administration has acknowledged the existence of CIA prisons, which have been a source of friction between Washington and some allies in Europe. The administration has come under criticism for its treatment of terrorism detainees. European Union lawmakers said the CIA was conducting clandestine flights in Europe to take terror suspects to countries where they could face torture.
Bush said the CIA program has involved such high-value terrorists as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, believed to be the No. 3 al-Qaida leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003; Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker; Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells before he was also captured in Pakistan, in March 2002.
The list also includes Riduan Isamuddin, known additionally as Hambali, who was suspected of being Jemaah Islamiyah’s main link to al-Qaida and the mastermind of a string of deadly bomb attacks in Indonesia until his 2003 arrest in Thailand.
Defending the program, the president said the questioning of these detainees has provided critical intelligence information about terrorist activities that have enabled officials to prevent attacks not only in the United States, but Europe and other countries. He said the program has been reviewed by administration lawyers and been the subject of strict oversight from within the CIA.
No torture during interrogation
Bush would not detail the type of interrogation techniques that are used through the program, saying it was tough but was not torture.
“This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill,” the president said. “It is invaluable to America and our allies.”
The president’s announcement, which the White House touted beforehand and asked to be televised live on the networks, comes as Bush has sought with a series of speeches to sharpen the focus on national security two months before high-stakes congressional elections.
The president successfully emphasized the war on terror in his re-election campaign in 2004 and is trying to make it a winning issue again for Republicans this year.
The president said the 14 key terrorist leaders, including Mohammed, Binalshibh, and Zubaydah, that have been transferred to the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay would be afforded some legal protections consistent with the Geneva conventions.
“They will continue to be treated with the humanity that they denied others,” Bush said.
Bush also laid out his proposal for how trials of such key suspected terrorists — those transferred to Guantanamo and already there — should be conducted, which must be approved by Congress. Bush’s original plan for the type of military trials used in the aftermath of World War II was struck down in June by the Supreme Court, which said the tribunals would violate U.S. and international law.
Aides said the legislation being introduced on Bush’s behalf later Wednesday on Capitol Hill insists on provisions covering military tribunals that would permit evidence to be withheld from a defendant if necessary to protect classified information.
 Reply:   Calls for more details on CIA
Replied by(Noman) Replied on (8/Sep/2006)

The US president's disclosure that terrorism suspects had been held in CIA-run prisons, has drawn approval from activists and defence lawyers, but some have called for more details on the secret jails.
George W Bush said in a White House speech on Wednesday that a small number of high-value detainees, including the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been kept in CIA custody in order to be "held secretly, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts".
International lawmakers and civil rights campaigners have long called on Bush to acknowledge that the US used a network of secret prisons and have transferred prisoners between them on covert flights.
Manfred Nowak, the UN special investigator on torture, called Bush's acknowledgment of CIA secret prisons "progress", but said their existence was already known.
Nowak said: "We knew there was secret places of detention because we knew there were people who had been arrested and then we lost track of them."
The deputy president of Malaysia's largest opposition party, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party, also said the acknowledgment of the CIA prisons was not surprising.
More unpopular
Nasharudin Mat Isa said: "To us this is nothing new, Bush's use of military and force to act upon his agenda. This latest boast of his [about CIA secret prisons abroad] will make him even more unpopular among Americans."
Nowak, who reports to the UN Human Rights Council, the global body's top rights watchdog, has said the use of secret prisons violate anti-torture commitments under international law because keeping detainees in such places is a form of enforced disappearance.

Bush said the programme led to
the capture of al-Qaeda leaders
He said the transfer of 14 detainees from secret centres to Guantanamo Bay was "an improvement", but said that "of course there are many others".
Bush is pressing Congress to quickly pass administration-drafted legislation authorising the use of military commissions for trials of terror suspects after the Supreme Court in June ruled that trying detainees in military tribunals violated US and international law.
He said that the interrogation techniques used were tough, but did not constitute torture.
Alexander Downer, Australia's foreign minister, has said that the CIA's secret imprisonment and interrogation of terror suspects has achieved a great deal for the war on terrorism.
Al-Qaeda link
Downer said Australia had benefited directly from the programme, citing the arrests of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was al-Qaeda's link to the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, and that group's operations chief, Indonesian Riduan Isamudin.
Jemaah Islamiyah is blamed for a string of deadly attacks in Indonesia, including the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002 that killed 202 people, 88 Australians among them, and an attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
Downer conceded that the prison programme was controversial, but said critics should accept that extraordinary measures were needed to deal with the global threat of terrorism revealed by the September 11 attacks.
He said the information garnered "has led to the capture and in some cases the killing of terrorists who might have otherwise killed innocent people".

Agencies

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BC9B5FFB-5FF3-4F01-905E-92ED823A1D53.htm

 
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