"We See No Need for Action"

by emptywheel

Since the alleged abductions did not take place on Austrian soil, in an Austrian airplane or on an Austrian ship, we see no need for action.

We see no need for action. That's what a spokesperson for the Austrian Interior Ministry said in response to learning that long-time Austrian resident and Sudanese citizen Masaad Omer Behari was held for three months without cause in Jordan. The Jordanians even told Behari they didn't believe him to be a terrorist--they just needed information.

But Austria did nothing because, after all, Behari isn't an Austrian citizen, he wasn't kidnapped on Austrian soil, he wasn't abducted in an Austrian plane. Of course, they had him under surveillance. The Jordanians--and their US puppet-masters--no doubt learned of Behari's movement through the Austrians. But still. We see no need for action.

That's the picture of the US extraordinary rendition program described in Craig Whitlock's WaPo article and accompanying court transcript. It's all carefully designed such that there is no trace, no legal authority, "no need for action."

Take the discussion between two SISMI agents, for example, where they describe an anonymous note, the note via which the CIA asked SISMI's help to kidnap a number of European residents. With an anonymous note, the CIA and SISMI conducted the (as Hannah Arendt would label it, banal) bureaucracy of kidnapping.

M. MANCINI: How was that request we made written, was it protocol?

G. PIGNERO: Which request?

M. MANCINI: The one for the rendition, the one the director gave you, was it protocol or not?

G. PIGNERO: Noooo! No, no.

M. MANCINI: Then what was it?

G. PIGNERO: No, no. It was an anonymous note.

M. MANCINI: An anonymous note.

G. PIGNERO: An anonymous note. It wasn't protocol; it was just a note I kept until one year ago, when... I kept it in my office. Then one fine day I read this thing...

M. MANCINI: (Laughs)

G. PIGNERO: You know what?

M. MANCINI: (Laughing) You made a...

G. PIGNERO: Ah, go [expletive] yourself!

M. MANCINI: (Laughs)

G. PIGNERO: I destroyed it, and that was the only copy.

Just like that. No trace. Of the note and, no doubt, some of the people that note ordered disappeared. (Though, there is a certain degree of irony that this barbarism was caught using wiretaps. Live by wiretap and die by the wiretap, I think they say.)

And just to make sure there was no trace, they created false stories to hide any trace. Want to know why the Italians didn't go looking for Abu Omar--the ones uninvolved in the kidnapping, I mean? Simple. The CIA told them precisely what they suspected, that he had gone to the Balkans.

When Nasr vanished in February 2003, police and prosecutors in Milan thought at first that he had slipped out of the country on his own, perhaps to join resistance forces in Iraq in advance of the U.S.-led invasion. The CIA lent credence to their suspicions a few months later, when it delivered an intelligence bulletin to Rome stating that Nasr had been seen in the Balkans.

Again, I wonder how the CIA knew to tell the Italians he had been seen in the Balkans? Taps? Or just their own inquiries?

And finally, there's the sheer scope of it--an international trade in illegally disappeared people. The CIA tried, at least, to deal one Red Brigade member for a bunch of Islamic radicals.

For example, Pignero said in his deposition that the CIA's Rome station chief had offered in 2002 to abduct a fugitive leader of the Red Brigades -- a Marxist network blamed for dozens of assassinations in Italy -- who had found refuge in South America. "The Americans would capture him and turn him over to us, and we in return would have to 'extradite' him to Italy without any legal proceedings," Pignero said.

In exchange, the CIA wanted help in abducting Islamic radicals living in the Italian cities of Turin, Vercelli and Naples, Pignero said. Italian intelligence officials rejected the offer, he added, because it was "contrary to international laws."

Good thing we've got the Berlusconi government intelligence, huh, to tell us about international laws? When we need to take lessons from a guy like Berlusconi, we have fallen low indeed. And note the deal--the Italians would have gotten their guy. But they couldn't extradite him. All off the books. Just disappear him, without any legal proceedings.

All set up to carry organized disappearances. With no need for action.

Comments

[kim]

I have great hopes for this new Congress, there are so many important issues to resolve and the leadership isn't going to play CYA for the White House or the former majority (of course I'm also very worried about a Big Diversion, in the ME say, engineered by a desperate Administration and its friends).

[dok]

You have an outstanding good and well structured site. I enjoyed browsing through it.a

[bgg]

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[Tina]

Hello people!i

[bgg]

Thank you sooooo much!%