Hume's report on Uzbekistan neglected to
mention evidence of U.S. rendition policy
Media Matters
May 24, 2005
Hume's report on Uzbekistan neglected to mention evidence of U.S. rendition
policy there
Fox News devoted a full segment of the May 23 edition of Special Report with
Brit Hume to political repression and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, but
failed to mention that the United States regularly sends terrorism suspects to
Uzbekistan for interrogation, in a practice called rendition, according to news
reports. The Central Intelligence Agency has rendered dozens of U.S.-held
detainees to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation despite world
condemnation of the government's torture of prisoners.
In an interview with Columbia University professor Steven Sestanovich, a
former ambassador and State Department official, host Brit Hume noted that,
although the United States would like to condemn Uzbek President Islam Karimov,
"The problem for the U.S. is that he has been a strategic ally in the war on
terror, and the U.S. has a military base there." But neither Hume nor
Sestanovich mentioned one crucial form of assistance that Karimov has
reportedly provided: allowing the CIA to render detainees to Uzbekistan for
interrogations that would likely be illegal for U.S. interrogators to
perform.
Despite "little high-level contact" between the U.S. and Uzbek governments
prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, growing evidence demonstrates that
the United States has rendered "dozens" of detainees to Uzbekistan for
interrogations since then, "even as Uzbekistan's treatment of its own prisoners
continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the
State Department," according to a May 1 article in The New York Times. When
asked about the practice at an April press conference, President Bush stated:
"We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back
to their home country."
A May 18 Washington Post report gave a similar account of U.S. renderings to
Uzbekistan: "The United States has also transported suspected terrorists to
Uzbekistan as part of its 'rendition' program, despite documented torture by
the government." On the March 7 edition of ABC's World News Tonight, former
British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray stated that the CIA knew that the
Uzbeks were torturing prisoners, including one case in which he received photos
of a prisoner who was boiled alive. When his deputy confronted the CIA station
chief about the practices, he was told "Yes, it [information] probably was
obtained under torture."
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