Allegations of torture put U.S. on defensive

By JOHN HALL
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- The plot seems to be from a Grade-B, wet cobblestone movie about Europe during the rise of the Third Reich: hollow-eyed men and women describing how they were bound and blindfolded by men with German accents and taken to cold prison cells where they were stripped and beaten.
Only now, the accents are said to be American and the allegations are coming from Europeans mainly of Middle Eastern heritage who claim they were snatched off tarmacs and kidnapped by secret agents. And these charges are being made against the United States.
One of the accusers is a German national.
This is not a movie.
Human rights groups in Europe are questioning whether hundreds of unlisted and unregistered American flights into small airports all over Europe were secret CIA missions to carry terrorist suspects to secret detention camps or to countries like Egypt where torture is used.
Rice's denials
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is being forced to spend almost all her political capital during her European trip this week denying the United States condones or practices torture.
The public relations mess is a result of the CIA's practice known as "rendition," in which suspected terrorists are whisked away to foreign countries for harsh questioning bordering on torture.
In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Rice admitted the United States had made a mistake in one such case involving a German national named Khaled al-Masri. He claims he was held captive and tortured by U.S. government agents in Afghanistan after he was arrested while attempting to enter Macedonia for a holiday trip.
Al-Masri, who was born in Lebanon, has filed a lawsuit against former CIA director George Tenet seeking at least $75,000. The German parliament is planning to take up the matter.
This is one of many black eyes the United States is getting all over Europe because of so-called "rendition flights" issue and the growing controversy over whether this country condones torture.
Rice's carefully worded attempt to explain this practice before she left for Europe failed to lay it to rest. She wanted to explain that it was reserved for hard-core Al-Qaida leadership thugs who had escaped criminal justice.
She said the United States "does not use the airspace or the airports of any country" to transport a detainee to "any country where he or she will be tortured."
She said: "Detainees may only be held for an extended period if the intelligence or other evidence against them has been carefully evaluated and supports a determination that detention is lawful."
The dry, legal mumbo jumbo sounded like loophole language rather than a full-throated denial.
Rice's objective on the trip was winning more European cooperation in the war on terrorism, which she characterized as a "two-way street."
Increasingly, no one is on the street but the Americans, with occasional help from a few Britons and Eastern Europeans. Legal authorities in Germany and France are laying down their responsibilities and burdens.
The Europeans say it is hard to cooperate with a country that has such low standards.
Secret prisons
Reports that the CIA maintained a network of secret prisons in Eastern Europe where detainees may have been harshly treated, including the practice of mock drowning known as "waterboarding," have ignited a new round of angry criticism of the United States by human rights groups. The European Union has threatened to throw countries out of the organization if they knowingly allowed such prison camps to operate.
Several countries have denied hosting the sites, which has narrowed the list of suspects in what has become a Western European witch hunt.
It is a sad thing when association with the United States is not a favorable matter -- particularly for a newly liberated democracy.
But at least Germany -- a nation not too long out from darkness -- has won an explanation from the United States about the mistreatment of one of its nationals. That could be a start.
X John Hall is the senior Washington correspondent of Media General News Service. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.