A friendly reminder from the December 27, 2002 edition of The Scotsman:
AL-QAEDA suspects captured by the United States have been handed over to foreign intelligence agencies for torture, it was claimed yesterday.Today's NY Times led with a story about the CIA's torture of Al Qaeda suspects. It was featured as a major scoop, but I think everyone and their grandma knew this was going on.
A US official was reported to have said intelligence agencies in countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Morocco and who are known to use brutal methods were used to get answers to questions posed by the CIA.
"We don't kick the **** out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the **** out of them," the official is reported to have said.
"If you don't violate someone?s human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," another said. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA." [more]
What's highlighted above -- the outsourcing of torture by the US government -- is probably a much more common occurrence than the outright torture of detainees. And yet, it receives scant attention.
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