Your trusted source

Some 54 countries helped facilitate the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret detention, rendition and interrogation program in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a new human rights report that documents broad international involvement in the American campaign against Al Qaeda, the report of Globalizing Torture initiative reads.

The report gives the detailed lists of the countries that helped the CIA in the arrest of al-Qaeda members. The assistance of those countries included things like permitting the C.I.A. to run secret interrogation prisons on their soil and allowing the agency to use their airports for refueling while moving prisoners around the world.

“Some of the harsh interrogation methods the C.I.A. used on prisoners under President George W. Bush have been widely denounced as torture, including by President Obama, who banned such techniques. In addition, some prisoners subjected to extraordinary rendition — transferred from one country to another without any legal process — were sent to countries where torture is standard practice,” the New York Times writes.

According to the report Amrit Singh, the author of the Open Society report, “Globalizing Torture,” said she had found evidence that 25 countries in Europe, 14 in Asia and 13 in Africa lent some sort of assistance to the C.I.A., in addition to Canada and Australia. “The moral cost of these programs was borne not just by the U.S. but by the 54 other countries it recruited to help,” Ms. Singh said.

Azerbaijan permitted use of its airports and airspace for flights associated with CIA extraordinary rendition operations, and also arrested an individual who was subjected to secret CIA detention.

“Aircraft linked to the CIA landed in Azerbaijan 76 times between the end of 2001 and the end of 2005. Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, is reported to have been used as a common “staging point” for extraordinary rendition operations, meaning that planes and crews would often meet and prepare there. More specifically, U.S. court records show that Richmor Aviation, a company that operated CIA extraordinary rendition flights, landed two flights in Baku in 2004,” the document says.

Besides that according to the report Azerbaijani officials also arrested Saudi Arabian citizen Ahmed Muhammed al-Darbi in June 2002 and transferred him to U.S. custody in August 2002, after which he was transferred to Bagram, Afghanistan and later to Guantanamo Bay, where he remains imprisoned. “There are no known judicial cases or investigations in Azerbaijan regarding its participation in CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition,” the report says.