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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: The Libyan rendition controversy could complicate Libya’s relations with the US and other nations.  As we heard, Abdul Hakim Belhaj is a former member of a group that had ties to al-Qaeda.  And that raises questions about how Washington will work with him as a member of Libya’s new government.  I put them to New York Times Magazine contributing writer, James Traub, who’s been examining the Libyan transition.

James Traub: It would certainly not be a good thing if the government of Libya were controlled by members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, but that’s not the case.  There is this one guy, this one guy seems like a very interesting person who says yes, that’s who I used to be; that’s not who I am now. Now, obviously, we can’t trust that that’s the case, and in any case it certainly seems like Libya’s so-called Transitional National Council, which is the interim government, doesn’t consist of people like him at all.  If anything it consists of probably un-representatively pro-western, basically liberal minded folk who have agreed to include him in the group. Now, documents found in Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli match the story that Belhaj has told, that he was taken off a flight in Bangkok and he then says we then tortured by two CIA officials.  We don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s perfectly plausible that his claims are true. Now, why is that important?  Does that mean that when this guy says he is nevertheless willing to work with the west he’s lying because he’s filled with hatred of the west?  That would be plausible, but from all accounts and in terms of what he has said has so far been pursuing a non-Jihadist agenda.

Werman: So what then is the answer?  How does the US move forward now when one of the emerging leaders in a post-Gaddafi government says he was tortured by the CIA?

Traub: Well, so fine, so he says that and the British are now doing an inquiry, and they may very well find out that it’s true that he was tortured by the CIA.  So then the question is is the United States going to apologize?  Answer, no, it’s not going to apologize.  And is Belhaj going to be unhappy that he wasn’t apologized to?  I suppose he will, but life goes on. And so the real issue is what can the United States and other western nations do to ensure that the new government in Libya is an effective one, is a legitimate one, one that represents the Libyan people?  And there are a lot of answers to that question in terms of aid, in terms of political advice, in terms of lots of issues.  But I don’t think that this has to be a preoccupying fact.  There are much bigger sources of concern.  Are they gonna be able to form an effective government at all?  How are they going to bind together all these different freelance fighting units which have now converged on Tripoli?  These are the big questions.  I don’t think the Belhaj issue is nearly as important as that.

Werman: Right, but if Belhaj or other Islamists who have been extraordinarily rendered by the United States don’t get the apology that they want, I mean that wouldn’t be a very good start for US-Libyan relations.

Traub: Only if those guys are running the show.  I mean look, do I think that there should be an apology?  Yes.  Do I think there will be an apology?  No.  I mean in the new world that is emerging in the Middle East there will be myriad grievances against the west, because anybody who spent any time in the Middle East knows that there are deep-seeded grievances against the United States and against the West. And you have Barack Obama replace George Bush as president, it’s still going to be so.  And so this is part of the price that we have to decide we’re willing to pay in order to have a more democratic Middle East.  The alternative was to have autocratic allies who were able to suppress those voices, but in part for that very reason had very little legitimacy among their own people.

Werman: You know, last week, James Traub, I saw an interview with Dick Cheney about his forthcoming book and the word waterboarding was mentioned, and I realized I hadn’t seen that word for a while.  And now this story of Belhaj, a man from whom confessions were extracted through torture allegedly, does this put the torture to bay, to front and center again?

Traub: I wouldn’t mind if it did.  I don’t think it will, I mean it’s remarkable to me how kind of insignificant that’s been in this country.  You would think this would’ve violated our values in such a profound way.  So yes, I find it kind of appalling that there still is this stout defense of torture, and not only by Cheney, but you know, will the Belhaj case change that?  I don’t think so.  I don’t know.

Werman: James Traub’s most recent book is The Freedom Agenda.  His column, Terms of Engagement, appears each week at foreignpolicy.com.  James Traub, thank you so much.

Traub: Well, thank you.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman and this is The World, the co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. ‘Extraordinary rendition’ is a phrase that’s become part of our post-9/11 lexicon. It involves high valued terrorism suspects vanishing into CIA black site prisons overseas. Now, a court case involving a billing dispute between two American aviation companies is revealing just how the rendition program worked. For one thing, the government relied on private companies to fly the detainees around, and we’re finding out where those private jets touched down. Places like Bucharest, Baku, Cairo, Djiboutii, Islamabad and Tripoli. John Radsan is a former federal prosecutor and former assistant general counsel at the CIA. He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He says the new information fills in a lot of blanks.

John Radsan: The controversy about rendition is how many had been done under the Bush Administration, and the locations of where these people went to. And many of these countries, and we see some of those locations mentioned here, were countries that do not have a good record for protecting human rights, of treating their detainees fairly.

Werman: If the details involved reveal things about a secret government operation, how did this case between these two government contractors get to court in the first place?

Radsan: It’s a private lawsuit. There was a dispute about payment, so they filed a lawsuit there in State Court. What is more surprising to me is how this case could continue. I bet there is somebody in the Director’s office at the CIA, today or yesterday, asking the General Counsel how is it that we didn’t close down this lawsuit. I saw from the reporting that the judge in the case was surprised. He was waiting for somebody to contact him from the government because the judge had a sense that they were putting information on the public record that perhaps the United States government did not want on the record.

Werman: Like what, for example?

Radsan: The names of the contractors, the phone logs, the flight logs. This was a program that was operated largely in secrecy; removing suspected terrorists from points outside the United States to other points. The CIA went to these companies saying, “We’re going to protect your information, protect your personnel.” And this is based on the public reporting. I am not drawing on any of my experiences. The CIA is used to doing its operations in the shadows for legitimate reasons and they err on the side of not revealing information.

Werman: One company in the case said DynCorp is a government contractor that oversaw these rendition flights. Is there anything that they did that contravenes any law that you know of?

Radsan: Not that I know of, and there continues to be a debate. And this story will push along that debate about whether the convention against torture even applies to these transfers that are done outside the United States. We haven’t heard from the Obama administration on that issue as a matter of law. But we know from them that, as a matter of policy, they apply the standard of the convention against torture which is, that if there are substantial grounds for believing that the person is going to be tortured in the receiving country, you’re not allowed to transfer the person. So there is some talk that there may have been transfers that occurred under the Bush administration that violated that principle, but that principle is a matter of policy. There are still lawyers debating about whether that convention against torture applies to these transfers that are going on outside of U.S. territory.

Werman: And, will the details that have been revealed in this case now require the CIA to divulge what actually happened?

Radsan: I don’t believe so. Every bit of information that’s out there, whether it’s official or not, it makes it more difficult for the CIA to protect the lime; whatever lime they have now saying, “We can’t reveal anything because it’s classified.” So what we saw in some of the Guantanamo litigation, they were able to protect some information early on in the litigation, but as more information came out it made it more difficult for them as a matter of law or just public relations to say, “Well, we need to keep all of the secret.” I’ll give you one example. Before September 2006, it was a huge secret that we had secret prisons but, on that day, President Bush decided to reveal that we had a secret prison program. So it was his decision at that point to say that we had a secret prison program. From that point on it became more difficult to justify hiding any details. We don’t know all the details about the secret sites, but we don’t have a blanket assertion that the program is secret anymore.

Werman: John Radsan, a former federal prosecutor and a former assistant general counsel at the CIA.  He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota. John Radsan, thanks for speaking with us.

Radsan: Thank you.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Twenty-three Americans were sentenced to prison today in Italy. All but one of them work for the CIA and all were convicted of kidnapping. The case involves the abduction of an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric who was snatched off a street in Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation. The cleric says he was tortured there. Though the Americans received prison terms they’re not likely to do any time. John Radsan served as a CIA’s assistant general counsel from 2002 to 2004. He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. Now the case relates to the seizure and then extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric. Tell us who this man was – this cleric – and where is he now?

JOHN RADSAN: Based on the public record we believe that he was recruiting people to go and fight in Iraq against American forces. That he was a radical preacher in Milan. He’s of Egyptian origin. And he was stirring up people to fight against Americans and against western interests around the world. He’s not in prison right now. At the end of his rendition he was released and as I understand he’s in Egypt at this time.

WERMAN: And when he was extraordinarily rendered how actively do you think the US government actually participated in that?

RADSAN: From the public record it seems clear that the US was involved in his snatch in Italy. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. And that he was transferred. One of the questions was whether the Italian government knew about this. Was this a unilateral operation or was it a bilateral operation in Italy. I think it stands to reason that the CIA would not do something that is completely unilateral in Italy. That would make it very dangerous for the CIA officers. It would complicate the intelligence relationship between the CIA and the various Italian services. It would be bad at a political level. Of course if the CIA notifies its counterparts in Italy, they’re taking it on some sort of faith that the Italian authorities will in turn notify the political leaders in Italy. And it’s one of the questions we had in the trial and we still don’t know the level of Italian involvement and we don’t know the level of American involvement. But I don’t think any of these defendants has said that this did not take place – that the abduction did not take place. The defendants say that this was an authorized operation by the United States government.

WERMAN: And at the time what was the legal opinion relating to these kinds of operations in 2003? You were assistant general counsel for the CIA at the time.

RADSAN: I was assistant general counsel. I didn’t advice on this program. But I can speculate what the advice was. We comply with American law. We have to make sure that we comply with the American constitution, with the various statutes that apply to the CIA. When we do espionage in covert action we accept, as an unfortunate consequence, that in many situations we’re going to be violating international law and we may in many situations be violating the laws of other countries.

WERMAN: And for these 23 individual Americans who were sentenced today, are they going to have to be careful where they travel now? I mean would they want to avoid going on vacation in Italy for example?

RADSAN: That’s for sure. They’re not going to be going to Italy. They’ll also have to be careful about other countries that they go to. They’ll probably get legal advice. If they don’t they should to figure out what sort of extradition arrangements may exist between France and Italy, Singapore and Italy. I suspect that most of these people will be limiting their travel to within the United States. They’re not going to take the risk. We have examples of other people that have fallen in the international target. Henry Kissinger was careful about his travel because of various allegations. So these defendants will be in a similar category.

WERMAN: So what next? Will the US try to appeal this in any way?

RADSAN: I think the lawyers that are representing these people, they will appeal. At the end even if these convictions stand I don’t think we’re going to have American officers serving sentences there. In that sense the sentences are symbolic. I think it’s possible the Italians will ask for the extradition but I think it’s next to impossible that the Americans will extradite CIA officers – these are people that were serving their country – back to Italy to serve prison sentences. There’s an irony in this case. And that is that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, was one of our important colleagues in counterterrorism and continues to be. He might have been coordinating with other parts of the American government beyond the CIA but he is the one that has been leading the charge and getting over these hurdles to bring this case. So in that sense it’s one part of the counterterrorism community indicting and convicting another part of the international counterterrorism community.

WERMAN: That’s interesting. I mean briefly, if these sentences are symbolic as you say, what do you think is the one-line message from them?

RADSAN: The CIA got in trouble for arguably violating Italian law and the CIA lives in a murky world of having to violate the laws of other countries to do espionage and conduct covert action.

WERMAN: Well John Radsan, former assistant general counsel for the CIA. Thanks very much.

RADSAN: Thank you.

WERMAN: And the State Department said today it’s disappointed by the Italian court’s decision.

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Human rights advocates in EUROPE are calling for countries there to look into their own role in CIA prisoner abuse. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush administration. The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

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JEB SHARP: Human rights advocates in Europe are pressing for some action. They’re hoping the Obama Administration’s investigations into alleged CIA prisoner abuses will move Europe to do some self-examination of its own. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush Administration. But so far no one’s been held accountable. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: Europe has been through all of this before. In 2007 Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the Council of Europe, led an investigation into Europe’s role in America’s fight against terrorism. His findings? Several EU states let the US use their airports to move terrorism suspects around the globe. Some helped the CIA abduct targets. And some countries likely hosted secret CIA prisons. But most European governments simply ignored Marty’s report. The question is whether that will change now that the Obama Administration has released an internal CIA report on the agency’s interrogations and with the Justice Department investigating. There’s been some movement in Europe this week. Lithuania says it will investigate reports that it, like Poland and Romania, may have hosted a secret prison during the Bush era. Guilietto Chiesa is a member of the European Parliament from Italy. He says Europe can no longer remain quiet.

GUILIETTO CHIESA: The question now is to have the list of the people who have been detained in Lithuania. And probably there there have been torture, illegal interrogation, and very serious violation of human rights there. That means there are political and penal responsibilities.

HADDEN: Lithuanian denies it hosted a CIA prison and says it’s only investigating to clear its name. Gabriele Betchkaypeeteh is an editor at the Lithuanian daily paper Lietuvos Rytas. She says there’s no way her country could have hosted such a prison without word getting out.

GABRIELE BETCHKAYPEETEH: Technically it’s very difficult to have that prison in a country which has 3.5 million people and the place mentioned of the possible prison is quite small and we believe that local residents probably would have noticed any secret activities.

HADDEN: Romania also denies it hosted a prison. Same with Poland. Although that country says it’s investigating. Reed Brody, with Human Rights Watch in Brussels, says he was hoping that the CIA’s internal report on prisoner abuse would shed some light on this but he says it hasn’t.

REED BRODY: There were 23 pages of information in the CIA report on detention sites that were completely redacted. And obviously the CIA or whoever was involved here was afraid that if information about those sites were disclosed it could lead to further criminal investigations and prosecutions.

HADDEN: There’s also new pressure this week on some European governments to come clean on secret rendition flights. Amnesty International in Ireland says Shannon International Airport was used to move suspects. It’s calling for the Irish government to look into it. Reed Brody says if Europe doesn’t own up to its own role in the US-led war on terrorism it will lose credibility. And worse, quipped someone at the council of Europe today, Europe this person said has been criticizing the States for years on this but not only did Europe aid the effort it may now fall behind the US in investigating it. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden.

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