Rendition Trial Puts U.S. On Hot Seat

In Italy tonight, the president's visit isn't just facing more European protest. The administration's "war on terror" has also become the target of criminal prosecution.

In Milan, a trial opened against 26 Americans accused of working for the CIA. None of the Americans showed up, but in a courtroom lined with empty cages, they're charged with kidnapping a Muslim cleric on a street near his mosque in Milan and secretly flying him to Egypt, CBS News correspondent Richard Roth.

Abu Omar spent four years in jail there, tortured, he says, as a suspected terrorist.

"I think that this trial is excruciatingly embarrassing for the United States, but let's face it, the real issue is that the process of illegal renditions or kidnappings, effectively, has been a complete catastrophe for the United States," said Clive Stafford Smith, a civil rights lawyer.

President Bush acknowledged last year that some terror suspects had been held in secret prisons run by the CIA, but he didn't say where.

Now a report for Europe's human rights agency has named Romania and Poland as places where CIA prisoners were subjected to what amounted to torture. Both countries deny it.

But full of detail – pinpointing this airport in Eastern Romania, for instance, as one staging point for the secret operation – the report says complicity with the United States has put Europe in a "moral quagmire."

"In Europe, now we're seeing criminal prosecutions that are based on the accepted view that this system is not just illegal, it's criminal," said international lawyer Scott Horton.

That includes Germany, where arrest warrants are out for thirteen suspected CIA agents accused of kidnapping Khaled el-Masri. He's a German citizen who says he was blindfolded, drugged, and flown to Afghanistan three years ago — then released, with the explanation his abduction had been a mistake.

[grazinggoat]

CBS NEWS: 'Now a report for Europe's human rights agency has named Romania and Poland as places where CIA prisoners were subjected to what amounted to torture. Both countries deny it.'

Two low class azz-lickers countries, that collaborated with the then Nazi-Germans. Everybody knows how the Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps of Poland, Vertujeni, Bogdanovka, Secureni of Romania looked like. Infamy and horrors took place at the hand of those gentle gentiles...

And now it's Muslims' turn to suffer with at the hands of those same gentiles.

[chrissomebod]

Hey, Seven Pesos. I am from the south, and I do not personally know anyone here that supports Bush, much less torture. That's funny though, because it sounds like you are from the North, and you are preaching pretty extreme hate. What does that say about the North? Besides, many areas of the South are predominantly inhabited by Northerners that have relocated here within the past few years. Why not come up with something a little more valuable to add to the discussion?

[seven-pesos]

32% of americans support bush.

32% support war, death, hate and failed right wing policies.

where are these 32% from?

guaranteed you find them all south of the mason-dixon line.

rednecks, war supporters, phony christian snakes, republican snakes...

war, hate, bible thumpers, flag wavers...

nothing good comes out of the south

[sandy19731]

seven-pesos,

So,
How do you really feel?
Please respond with at least seven pages of stupid rhetoric (look it up). I'm going to lunch.

[seven-pesos]

bush says torture no big deal.

in the confederate south, torture of yankee prisoners of war was common.

murder of yankee p.o.w.'s was common.

in andersonville, georgia rebel confederate prisoner of war camp

that rebel scum murdered more than 13,000 yankee p.o.w.'s.

13,000 fine, young, defenseless yankee p.o.w.'s
murdered, tortured to death, hung, starved to death, allowed to die of disease.

yep, those southerners love that torture.

rednecks, white trash, war makers, phony christian snakes, bush loving republican freaks.

war, hate, death and destruction...

that's the bush loving south for you, folks!

[donaldd8]

IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION

Bush pulled us out of the ICC not to protect all Americans but to protect himself. We prosecute the troops and nonelected civilians who commit war crimes.

The ICC only would prosecute those individual government officials whose countries refuse to prosecute them for war crimes. You know, like, The United States.

Bush also through extortion, cutting off aid, forced many countries to promise not to prosecute him in the ICC.

Then along comes John McCain to the rescue with the Military Commissions Act which provides Bush immunity from prosecution in the United States.

[nadeau4201]

tv news and lies
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO AUTHORIZED THE USE OF TORTURE BY OUR MILITARY! You don%u2019t know that the use of illegal torture methods was authorized at the highest levels of our government, including the President himself. You were told that such acts at Abu Ghraib and other prisons were the work of a few %u2018bad apples%u2019 in the military and you believed it. The story served to cover up the wide use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo that has been recorded in photos and video tapes that the Pentagon still refuses to turn over to the US Circuit Court. The world learned of secret CIA flights that flew detainees to countries that permitted torture during interrogation. Still, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice publicly stated that the US does not tolerate torture. You just don%u2019t know.

[nadeau4201]

tv news and lies
YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT THE US CANNOT BE CHARGED WITH WAR CRIMES! You don%u2019t know that in May of 2002, the US pulled out of the only treaty that could result in charges being brought against the US government for war crimes: the International Criminal Court of the United Nations This move made it impossible for any American to face charges for crimes such as waging a preventive war, using outlawed weapons such as depleted uranium or torturing detainees. Months before pulling out of the treaty, the Bush administration had established with the ICC that US soldiers serving overseas would be immune from prosecution in the court, while politicians and US officials, including CIA operatives, could claim diplomatic immunity. As a result, the US has put itself above the law and can commit war crimes with impunity. You just don%u2019t know.

[nadeau4201]

Google: Tom Floccos who killed JFKjr

The long-time Special Forces and Division 4 operative%u2019s explosive evidence, witness testimony and his team%u2019s suppressed and classified final report naming former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, President George W. Bush and Senator Hillary Clinton among others as being involved in orchestrating the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. will require U.S. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to hear testimony to investigate John Jr.%u2019s death as part of his ongoing grand jury probe involving White House crime families.

[diet9]

You Americans got the government you deserve, problem is all of us in the rest of the world didn%u2019t deserve the government you got. Not enough of you bother to vote so your elections are a sham. For not voting you deserved Bush and his fellow criminals. I don%u2019t deserve that. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed didn%u2019t deserve that. Your petrol guzzling cars and poorly insulated housing addict you to oil to a degree that allows your government that I don%u2019t deserve to throw the world into turmoil. Your myopic religious fanaticism puts manic criminals who genuinely believe the US has the right to do anything it wants, anywhere, into power. You deserve them, the rest of us worldwide don%u2019t.