Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Findings
The independent and most prominent human rights organisation in the country, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), released its 2010 annual report in which extrajudicial killings of tribal Pakistanis by the US government do not go unnoticed.

In 2010 alone the US has killed in excess of 957 without accountability and injured hundreds more in the tribal region of Pakistan. And this is only from the 134 drone strikes that the media managed to report.

It is known that that innocent people, including women and children, are routinely among the victims of the United States’ “ill-defined licence to kill without accountability” (UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, Philip Aston, referring to drone attacks). But this is a puzzling reality since the drones are hailed as being “capable of incredible accuracy” once a target is locked-on.

Assuming this is the case, the cause of the furore over the use of drones must lie outside the issue of its accuracy.

TRIPOLI — Documents found in the abandoned Tripoli office of Moammar Gadhafi’s intelligence chief indicate the U.S. and British spy agencies helped the fallen strongman persecute Libyan dissidents.

The documents were uncovered by Human Rights Watch in the abandoned offices of Libya’s former spy chief and foreign minister, Moussa Koussa.

The group said it uncovered hundreds of letters between the cia, mi6 and koussa, who is now in exile in London. Letters from the CIA began, “Dear Moussa,” and were signed with first names only by CIA officials, Human Rights Watch said.

The current military commander for Tripoli of Libya’s provisional government, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was among those captured and sent to Libya by the CIA, Human Rights Watch said.

“Among the files we discovered at Moussa Koussa’s office is a fax from the CIA dated 2004 in which the CIA informs the Libyan government that they are in a position to capture and render Belhadj,” Human Rights Watch’s Peter Bouckaert said. “That operation actually took place. He was captured by the CIA in Asia and put on a secret flight back to Libya where he was interrogated and tortured by the Libyan security services.”

The files shed new light on the practice known as rendition, used by the United States under former president George W. Bush, in which the terrorism suspects were handed over to other countries for interrogation. Rights groups have criticized the United States for sending these suspects to countries where they were likely to be tortured.

Belhadj has said that he was tortured by CIA agents before being transferred to Libya, where he says hew as then tortured at Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison.

Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after Gadhafi abandoned his program to build unconventional weapons in 2004. but the files show his co-operation with the CIA and MI6 may have been more extensive than previously thought, analysts say.

http://www.pressdisplay....pressdisplay/viewer.aspx