Questions raised about U.S. handling of detainees aren’t only arising in the United States: they’re being raised and causing inquiries in Spain and elswhere, according to the New York Times:
LONDON, Nov. 11 – On the Spanish island of Majorca, the police quietly opened a criminal investigation in March after a local newspaper reported a series of visits to the island’s international airport by planes known to regularly operate for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Now, it has emerged that an investigative judge in Palma has ordered the police inquiry to be sent to Spain’s national court, to consider whether the C.I.A. was routing planes carrying terrorism suspects through Majorca as part of its so-called rendition program.
Under that system, the United States has bypassed normal extradition procedures to secretly transfer at least 100 suspects to third countries where, according to allegations by human rights groups and former detainees themselves, some of the suspects have been tortured.
The program is the focus of a number of European investigations. Spain is the third country in Europe to open a judicial inquiry into potential criminal offenses committed by C.I.A. operatives related to renditions. The other two are Germany and Italy, which on Friday formally requested the extradition of 22 people said to be C.I.A. operatives linked to the suspected kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003.
So this issue is now going beyond an issue that can be painted as strictly domestic politics — Democrats Versus Republicans. It’s hard to paint it that way, anyway, due to the fact that the treatment of detainees is a key issue to Republicans such as Senator John McCain and the Senate has gone on the record against torture.