Red Cross Confirms Iranian Envoy's Wounds

The BBC reports that the head of International Red Cross in Tehran has seen for himself wounds on the Iranian envoy who was released last week.

Peter Stoeker said there were marks on Jalal Sharafi's feet, legs, back and nose but he was unable to say if they were the result of torture.

Iranian media quoted Mr Sharafi saying the CIA tortured him "day and night".

Mr Sharafi was abducted in Iraq in February and released last week. The US denies any involvement in the case.

Mr Sharafi, second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, says he was kidnapped by Iraqi agents operating under the supervision of the CIA.

The wounds the Red Cross have confirmed are consistent with Sharifi's story that he was tortured but Stoeker said that, not being a doctor, he couldn't tell if they were caused by being tortured or not. According to Iranian doctors, there are signs someone drilled holes in Sharifi's feet as well as broke his nose, injured his ear and wounded his neck and back. The White House has denied US involvement:

"The United States had nothing to do with Mr Sharafi's detention and we welcome his return to Iran," said Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, last week.

He dismissed the claims as "just the latest theatrics of a government trying to deflect attention away from its own unacceptable actions".

An unnamed US intelligence official also denied any claims of abuse, saying: "The CIA does not conduct or condone torture."

Al though why the CIA feels it needs to deny condoning or conducting torture in this case, if it had - as it claims - nothing to do with his seizure in the first place, quite escapes me.

Such a blanket denial is in any case unbelievable on the face of it. The evidence that the CIA regularly condones or conducts torture is in fact overwhelming and no amount of reinterpreting what is or isn't torture to exclude waterboarding and other practises will leave plausible deniability any more.

As long ago as November 2005, ABC News gave a detailled description of the acts the CIA says aren't torture but that every other body involved in tracking the use of illegal methods of interrogation says are.

Recently one US military prosecutor refused to pursue a case against an almost-certainly guilty terrorist of the most heinous kind simply because the evidence against him was tainted beyond redemption by torture. Today, as my colleague Libby noted, the Bush administration is finding that it prosecutions are having to be more careful about not using evidence gained through torture to have any hope of success.

The CIA certainly conducts torture. Of course they deny it. Has there ever been a government or agency anywhere that proudly announced it tortured?

And today, Amnesty International has released a highly critical report on Egypt's record on torture and illegal detention. Egypt is one of the CIA's favorite destinations for illegal renditions - at least such 60 detainees were admitted to by Egypt in 2005. The report says Egypt has become an international centre for interrogation and torture on behalf of other states as part of the "war on terror" and adds that "a'no torture' deal with Egypt would not be worth the paper it was written on".

The CIA certainly condones torture. It costs them nothing to do so because in such cases the actual culprits are outwith their "control" and so easily if unbeleivably deniable. Congress, however, does have some control. It's time to cut off aid to Egypt for one thing - by US law sending aid to a nation that tortures is not allowed. Let's see how long it would be before Egypt spilled the beans on CIA and Bush administration complicity and direction then.