WikiLeaks: Egyptian torturers trained by FBI

From the Telegraph today:

The US provided officers from the Egyptian secret police with training at the FBI, despite allegations that they routinely tortured detainees and suppressed political opposition.

By Steven Swinford

According to leaked diplomatic cables, the head of the Egyptian state security and investigative service (SSIS) thanked the US for “training opportunities” at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. The SSIS has been repeatedly accused of using violence and brutality to help prop up the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. In April, 2009, the US ambassador in Cairo stated that “Egypt’s police and domestic security services continue to be dogged by persistent, credible allegations of abuse of detainees.

“The Interior Ministry uses SSIS to monitor and sometimes infiltrate the political opposition and civil society. SSIS suppresses political opposition through arrests, harassment and intimidation.”

In October, 2009, “credible” human rights lawyers representing alleged Hizbollah detainees provided details of the techniques employed by the SSIS. The cable states: “The lawyers told us in mid-October that they have compiled accounts from several defendants of GOE [Government of Egypt] torture by electric shocks, sleep deprivation, and stripping them naked for extended periods. . . (more)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8314475/WikiLeaks-Egyptian-torturers-trained-by-FBI.html

WikiLeaks: 2007 cable from USA touts cozy relationship with Egypt secret police

Read the Cairo embassy cable for yourself …..  [and check out paragraph 4 about Gaza and anyone who gets freight there is a terrorist] ….

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/28/2027

TAGS: PTER PREL PHUM KJUS

SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR JOHN PISTOLE

Classified By: Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone,

for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

¶1. (S) The Egyptians, and I, will warmly welcome you to Cairo. Despite strains in the relationship over the past several months, our partnership in law enforcement and mutual security affairs remains solid. Your visit provides the opportunity to review and reinforce our law enforcement cooperation with the State Security Investigative Service (SSIS), which is under the auspices of Minister of Interior Habib Al Adly (you have separate meetings with Adly and SSIS Director Hasan Abdul Rahman). We recommend you raise with both of them the proposal that Egypt share with us fingerprint records of suspected terrorists, to enter into the FBI’s global fingerprint database. This would greatly advance our practical law enforcement cooperation… (more)

http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2007/10/07CAIRO3155.html

 

Note: GWOT means Global War on Terror, embassy speak for ‘have at it, Boys’.