Tag: renditions

Abu Omar meets his Italian lawyer in Cairo, seeks travel documents

Posted on 04/06/200705/03/2021 By 3arabawy

Abu Omar finally met his Italian lawyer Carmelo Scambia Sunday in Cairo, where he signed the official documents to get Scambia on the case. The two later went to the Italian Consulate in Cairo, without a prior appointment, accompanied by Abu Omar’s Egyptian lawyer Montasser el-Zayat.

The reason for the visit was to get the consulate stamp on the Italian translation of the Egyptian documents. Also, Abu Omar wants to issue new Italian travel documents, instead of those confiscated by the Egyptian Mukhabarat on his arrival in Cairo on a CIA-chartered flight in February 2003 to face a torture odyssey, or what the CIA calls “extraordinary rendition.”

The three were met by the Italian Consular. While he was happy to process Abu Omar’s translated documents, he said he was not authorized to issue him travel documents, asking him instead to go to apply at the Italian Consulate in Alexandria, his city of residence. Abu Omar is planning to go there today.

Abu Omar threatens hunger strike in response to security hassles

Posted on 21/05/200720/01/2021 By 3arabawy

One hundred days have passed since Abu Omar’s release from State Security custody, and his saga continues.

Abu Omar was kidnapped from Milan, by the CIA in February 2003, part of their extraordinary renditions program, and was flown to Egypt where he was brutally tortured by the Mukhabarat and State Security Police.

Abu Omar is still banned from traveling outside the country. Moreover the government refuses to issue him a National ID card. This basically means he cannot open a bank account, issue a passport, or conduct any sort of transaction. He basically does not exist any more in the eyes of the law.

Abu Omar says he sent a letter to State Security Police demanding his documents, but they have ignored him completely. “If my problem does not get solved soon, I’ll travel to Cairo to protest and stage a hunger strike,” he told me tonight. “I’m expecting my arrest any minute, and have already prepared my bag with items I’ll need in prison.”

HRW calls for shutting down CIA prisons

Posted on 28/04/200715/01/2021 By 3arabawy

I received the following statement from Human Rights Watch:

The Bush administration’s continuing reliance on secret CIA prisons violates basic human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said today.
The announcement that Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility from CIA custody raises worrying questions about how long he has been detained by the CIA, where he was held, what kind of treatment he endured, and whether other prisoners still remain in CIA detention. The CIA has previously detained numerous detainees for months and even years.
“The CIA’s secret detention of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi is a blatant violation of international law,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. “This transfer shows that Congress will have to act to end the CIA’s illegal detention program.”
By holding people in unacknowledged, incommunicado detention, outside of the protection of the law, the Bush administration has violated the international legal prohibition on enforced disappearance. The CIA’s reliance on enforced disappearance also raises serious concerns about the likelihood of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Notably, numerous detainees previously transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo have claimed that they were subjected to torture.
Human Rights Watch also criticized the administration for transferring new detainees to the Guantanamo facility. Just one month ago, the Department of Defense announced that it had transferred to Guantanamo a Kenyan citizen, Mohammad Abdul Malik, arrested in Mombassa.