Portland Man: I was tortured in UAE for refusing to become an informant

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/portland-man-tortured-uae-behest-of-fbi

by beardless_sysad • 11 years ago

257 36 11 years ago

theguardian.com

codezero2• 11 years ago

This sucks, and what sucks more is that I assume it's true.

Also, what's the point of putting people on the no-fly list if they can take a private charter jet and get in anyways?

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

It sounds like it was paid for by the Swedish government:

Sweden paid for a private jet to fly him to Portland five years after he left.

I'd assume the "no fly list" isn't going to apply to requests from other governments to transport US citizens. I don't think the US is worried about friendly European governments shipping terrorists into the US on private planes.

hydrogen18• 11 years ago

That is not the case. Flights that don't even intend to land in the US can't enter the airspace of the US if they have someone on board that is a member of the no-fly list.

My theory is that someone in a diplomatic role in Sweden called in a couple favors to handle this. Since his request for asylum in Sweden was denied his visa there was likely to expire soon.

duaneb• 11 years ago

Also, what's the point of putting people on the no-fly list if they can take a private charter jet and get in anyways?

To intimidate citizens. What do you think?

sciguy77• 11 years ago

what's the point of putting people on the no-fly list if they can take a private charter jet and get in anyways?

Most people can't afford charter jets

superuser2• 11 years ago

Sure most people can't afford charter jets for day-to-day use, but for an average middle-class person, if you had to make a choice between chartering a jet and never going home again, you'd probably find a way.

pyre• 11 years ago

Because no one creates laws that might inconvenience the kind of people that can afford private charter jets from other countries.

rhino369• 11 years ago

Sadly I don't think I can say that it's definitely not true, but this is mostly speculation. UAE could have easily just gotten a memo from the FBI about a terrorism suspect and they decided on their lonesome to torture him.

There are only 500 U.S. citizens on the no fly list, it doesn't appear like it is being used a weapon of coercion on a wide scale.

The US has to share that sort of terrorism suspect list in order to get other countries lists and to make connections.

That said, I'm not sure how the fuck the No-Fly list has survived so long. It is boldly unconstitutional.

notahacker• 11 years ago

Sadly I don't think I can say that it's definitely not true, but this is mostly speculation. UAE could have easily just gotten a memo from the FBI about a terrorism suspect and they decided on their lonesome to torture him.

True. It's perfectly plausible the FBI would outsource their dirty work in a deniable manner, but equally plausible the UAE would be highly motivated to take extreme measures in interrogating someone circumstantially linked to terrorism entirely of their own accord. Arguably the interrogator volunteering the US and UAE are definitely working together is better evidence for the latter than the former.

Either way the beatings actually add to the suspicion that the approach - joined up or otherwise - was governed more by a "just because we don't have any evidence of your guilt doesn't mean we believe you're innocent" attitude than "we really badly want you to work for us"

djf1• 11 years ago

Do you have a source on the number of U.S. citizens on the no fly list?

I see a report from 2012 which cites 500 Americans, out of a total 21,000 (https://www.aclu.org/national-security/factsheet-aclus-chall...), and a report from 2014 which cites 47,000 total (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/05/watch-commande...), so I would assume the number of U.S. citizens on the no fly list is at least double the figure you list.

zo12• 11 years ago

"There are only 500 U.S. citizens on the no fly list, it doesn't appear like it is being used a weapon of coercion on a wide scale."

Well, we can only speculate as to the extent that this list is being used to "intimidate" individuals. Just because there are only 500 on the list, does not mean it hasn't be threatened upon countless other individuals.

It doesn't even have to be directed at you for you to be scared of it. Heck, I'm even scared that some day some random asshole with the same name as me will do something stupid and get himself on that damn list; and I haven't even done anything wrong. I think you'll find a few news articles online about people being harassed because their name hits against the list.

I guess that brings me to the third point. There are 500 unique names on that list, as I'm under the impression that all that list has is name+surname. Unless they include other details, odds are there are many more than 500 individuals that those names match against.

lowleveldrone• 11 years ago

This really should never happen, but sadly has happened before - famously to Maher Arar, a dual-Syrian/Canadian citizen who was detained in the US and then sent to Syria to be tortured (rather than returned to Canada, his destination) [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

cryoshon• 11 years ago

More evidence of the US supporting torture in its backwards client regimes. This evidence has piled up for years and years, starting from well before the School of the Americas.

On the topic of schools and supporting torture in client regimes, remember that someone had to both negotiate with the UAE in order to convince them that it would be in their best interest to do as the US says on the topic of torturing foreigners, as well as teach UAE's security forces how to torture in the US-approved way. That way, when someone the US wants information from comes along, they can be tortured by the UAE so that US can keep its PR.

Think about that for a minute. The US is teaching third parties how to torture effectively on its behalf because it wants the torturing done to the proper standard and because it is afraid of the backlash that will occur when torture is exposed. From this thought, we can say that the US has extensive internal standards regarding what methods of torture are acceptable and useful for clients to know, which are likely influenced by how bad and how directly attributable these torture techniques will look when exposed.

A speculation: the US still tortures people directly in addition to third party torture. They already have the secrecy, infrastructure, training, standards, incentive, and targets in hand.

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

backwards client regimes

They also have some modern client regimes, like Europe.

rmxt2• 11 years ago

Is there any depth to your assertion? Or is it just a passive-aggressive swipe to denigrate Europe(ans) while derailing deeper discussion about critiques of the United States?

I will give you credit for acknowledging the "backward"/"modern" difference. The most important difference is that in the European "client regimes" (to use your language), they at least purport to maintain a semblance of democracy and human rights standards for their constituents. In that respect, call the convergent evolution towards the American-style government policy, a "client" or "vassal" state type of relationship if you'd like, but at least it's one in which (at a minimum) a superficial level of fairness is maintained (i.e., in contrast to sharia law countries).

Zikes• 11 years ago

A speculation: the US still tortures people directly in addition to third party torture.

Gitmo?

olefoo• 11 years ago

How about Chicago? [1]

There is always the impulse to torture suspects for any law enforcement agency. We need to act as citizens to ensure that torture and the outsourcing of torture are treated as the grand criminal matters that they are. Anyone in the chain of command who participates in or tolerates torture needs to face charges.

1. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-polic...

pdkl95• 11 years ago

The US is teaching third parties how to torture effectively ... to the proper standard ... because it is afraid of the backlash ...

I call this "mens rea".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

vijayr• 11 years ago

No week passes by without a story like this, against many many governments - something like crazy laws, little to no oversight, torture, illegal snooping etc etc. AT this point, is there any western country who is not doing stuff like this?

briandear2• 11 years ago

Does this story have any actual proof or is this just an allegation?

lucajona2• 11 years ago

I don't know why this was downvoted, it seems like a valid question. I suppose I will get downvoted too, but I think it's worth discussing this now, since it's made the front page even though it probably shouldn't have.

So what evidence is there that the US condoned Fikre's torture? The alleged statement of a torturer? That doesn't seem very reliable. He couldn't prove his story in Sweden, so how will he prove it in the US?

Isn't it possible that the UAE came to find out that Fikre had some involvement with the FBI over the Portland mosque, wanted to know why, and decided on torture on their own? Maybe they suspected that he had been turned into an FBI informant.

It seems a bit far-fetched that the US would be outsourcing the torture of suspected Muslim terrorists to a largely Islamic country, and just waiting for suspects to travel there so that it can happen. And the State Department's statement that they saw Fikre and he seemed ok seems strange if they had anything to hide.

nindalf2• 11 years ago

By the standards you've asked, a great many crimes could never be proven. Anyone tortured or raped would never have any evidence other than their word that they had been assaulted. Should they be ignored then?

It seems far fetched to think that the UAE would take a sudden interest in the security of Portland, Oregon but perhaps that's possible. What IS impossible is that a country that's a client of the US would dare to hold, let alone torture a US citizen for a 106 days without the explicit approval of the US.

You think the guy's story is far fetched because he just happened to be in the UAE. Not so much, really. They keep track of the movements of many people (1.5m according to Citizenfour) so they would have known that he was in the UAE. At that point it would only have required one bright bulb at the FBI to come with the idea "hey, why not we get our buddies in the UAE to have a chat with him?"

jensen123• 11 years ago

It's of course bad that this sort of thing is happening (assuming it is true), but I cannot say that I have that much sympathy for the guy. He's a muslim. Islam is an intolerant religion (look at how they treat gays etc.). Indirectly, this guy supports the mistreatment of other people.

Why is it bad that this sort of thing is happening then? Now it might just be against muslims, but if this becomes a habit, it could soon start to be used against other people, too.

Portland Man: I was tortured in UAE for refusing to become an informant

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