hold the office in the former soviet republic it's the last direct election of a head of state in georgia because the country is turning into a parliamentary democracy supporters of. prime minister rudd no worker missing a push through a vote in parliament to cut funding for the man who replaced him the former president mahinda rajapaksa took over after the president removed her missing up plunging the country into a political crisis there's been violence in parliament when those loyal to rajapaksa rejected two no confidence votes against him. south korea's supreme court has ordered a japanese industrial giant mitsubishi to compensate twenty eight south koreans for forced labor during the second world war the decision follows the court's ruling in october in favor of those seeking damages from another japanese company for its use of forced wartime labor those are the headlines on al-jazeera people and power rendition revisited is up next. china could be

facing a debt i suppose that's according to s. and p. global trumpet ministration just been insisting towards the saudis and other uses that they want to have more production to cool down the prices we bring you the stories that are shaping the economic world we live in counting the cost on al-jazeera. america's president trumka police told should workers he's pledged to keep the contaminated detention facility opened and is set to bring back wall to pull the suspects so in the first of a special two project best to go reaping to the u.s. state that was once the heart of america's illegal program offering dish and tool to ask whether the u.s. could be about to return to

a dark chapter in the nation's history. smithfield's north carolina. a quiet backwater in america's south. on the face of it an unremarkable bible belt town tucked in need rural wooded countryside. but thirteen years ago stories started to emerge suggesting something sinister was going on. mysterious flights leaving from the little airport. people were being seized from their homes in streets around the

world transported to foreign prisons and secret cia interrogation camps known as black sites. you feel some sort of them would give off and. for. somebody for. the covert operation officially called extraordinary rendition took place in the years between two thousand and two to two thousand and nine. in north carolina locals began calling the flights from their local airports torture taxes this was a planned orchestrated program of kidnapping for torture i found that to be just intolerable we spoke to a woman whose husband was another victim of rendition. to

this day the truth about the cia's rendition program and the role of north carolina's airports remains officially shrouded in secrecy. that are realistic what do you think tonight from al-jazeera tell of it. when making a programme about cia or indifferent. i and investigations aren't welcome. and sorry while you think. nor all questions i mean he's going to start with he's going to call the police yet he's not interested in hearing the. nine eleven the deadliest attack ever on american soil the mass murder of nearly three thousand people a defining moment in american history which was to leave

a toxic legacy in its wake the u.s. launched a global war on terror including a convert program of kidnap and torture the secretary of state at the time was general colin powell his chief of staff was colonel larry wilkerson today he says that operation was a terrible mistake and still doing irreparable damage to the united states moral position in the world as a leader of human rights and human dignity and rule of law and so forth we no longer are seen as a leader indeed by more than two billion people in the world according to polls were considered the number one threat to their future. alison case in lives near johnston regional airport one of the two north carolina airports used to say good rendition flights she took me there. so if you will look down there that's aero contractors. are

a contract is our local firm that supplied planes for the secret cia program. in the years following two thousand and five allison and her friends began to investigate air a contract is she realized that some of the people involved with the company would people she knew one was an attorney. two of them had children the same age as my boys and it was shocking right because they were prominent members of the community is so they put themselves out there as being you know. standard of morality. it took real courage for these local women and their supporters to investigate and to confront what was being done in this state. was going. to see the.

budget confront it they did you see that were contacting them here to ask them to come out and meet with us which they did not do the whole way thing. u.s. senate intelligence committee figures suggest one hundred nineteen individuals held by the cia nearly a quarter of whom were later found to be improperly detained in much of the program and the possibly many hundreds more seized remains unknown. but what's clear air a contract has played a central role transporting forty nine individuals for interrogation. on the other side of the world in london i think to makes it westminster university

have pieced together how the program worked every contract has maintained and operated to their profit in particular which was central to the war on terror and the torture program the evidence is absolutely encourage. the torture program took place that it violated domestic and international law many many points and that north carolina air was central to the earth that. we traveled to gratz nostra to meet el masry in late two thousand and three he was arrested on holiday at the macedonian border he was then taken to a small hotel room where an official accused him of being a member of al qaeda and it certainly should be a misprint. on the other side he's in the. second see them fresh from. college was telling the truth he was not a member of al qaeda shockingly this was a case of mistaken identity but there came worse he was handed over to u.s.

agents and bundled onto an air a contract as plane. on burnham to be from orgon. america should have been done for fear for life even our. own human political if you have. a name to him his destination was a site in afghanistan used to cia interrogation one of the network of foreign prisons and secret say called cia black sites places where suspected terrorists many of whom turned out to be innocent was systematically tortured in a brutal bid to gain intelligence. this man was a career cia operative his name is glenn paul he vividly remembers his first

impression of one cia interrogation cound in an unnamed country. inside it is immediately. pitch black. as black as any darkness you have ever experienced. you cannot see. if you could not see your fingers here in front of absolute darkness. and disorienting and deafening. silence a brutal regime designed to undermine prison his sense of self and induce helpless dependence we thank unconsciously that. the sun will rise once a day and then sets into the day that's one of the defining unthought of realities life not if you're in the hands of the cia we can make the sun shine or not.

when he had been assigned to interrogate a captured prisoner he'd been daft in nature out what he was expected to do. so the instructions were you will do whatever it takes to get him to talk do you understand and then it was pressure him pressure him it was the word frequently used pressure him turn up the pressure on him. be creative and i was literally literally stunned i responded we don't do that. he said well we do not know my thought was pardon me for this and i thought these are this is very clear my thought was hold it this is clearly one of the critical moments in the history of

the united states we're talking about torturing and that is illegal. and. i wouldn't do it. classified documents prison as accounts and reports outline a regime of abuse euphemistically united as enhanced interrogation subsequently denounced as torture techniques included waterboarding simulated drowning rule slamming sleep deprivation extreme stress positions and sexual and psychological abuse. is as or best man did been to europe. it's all or them even in dimensions or see the fact that some are done via their finish the necessary. to god b.s. . shut the non-god as ignorant as it carved from. a number which os itself.

on the shelves. and the modern aggressiveness wrangler of. the small cinema. was held without any explanation the cia realized very soon that they got the wrong man but it took more than four months before he was released they put him on a plane to albania drove him to a remote location and then dumped him on the under-funded in ireland. and the not for lawson or friendly and. man is a who gave. them the. today he is free but still paying the price suffering severe psychological trauma and whilst macedonia has apologized for its road and his friend issued he's received no apology from the u.s. he's now mounting the latest in a series of legal cases against the u.s.

administration since keshia an issue and she missions just kind. just come. to the home of the mature much under the. earth. back in north carolina campaign as i determined that new victim of rendition is for course and. italian citizen. was seized in pakistan in two thousand and two and rented on an average night to moral case where he was subjected to her in disability before being freed a full nine years later. today his wife anna speaks on his behalf the trauma of his experience has left him unable to relive this ordeal. eight. zero.

zero. zero. zero so. in twenty fourteen after years of investigation the us senate intelligence committee compiled a report into cia torture. but those who hate america was finally going to tell the full story about this period to be disappointed all that was made public is heavily redacted executive summary the entire report it is six thousand pages to this day remain secret. we ought to warn to see those six thousand pages of the full report because if the executive summaries any indication that report does to

a standing things categorically it says torture not more and it says we tortured and we tortured extensively we even murdered people the ultimate torture that report should come out in the main reason it didn't come out as a north carolinian by the name of richard burr who is chairman of the senate select committee on intelligence prevented that report from being read by the american people and as far as i'm concerned that's complicit with war crimes. yes because what's reported in that report. war crimes senator byrd declined our request for comment. earlier this year senator byrd a republican also chaired the confirmation hearing for president donald trump's controversial nominee as the new head of the cia or jena high school true.

mccain has opposed confirmation hearings here back in may reignited controversy over the cia's pace nine eleven torture program not least her a record hitting a detention facility in thailand in two thousand and two where a detainee was water boarded. the. do you believe in hindsight that those techniques were immoral senator what i believe sitting here today is that i support the higher moral standard we have decided to hold ourselves to answer the question . and i think i've answered the question if not as you know i'm strong supporter of your nomination to be director of the central intelligence agency you may in fact be the most qualified nominee ever nominated for this role here in our june thank you mr chairman. tina hospitals appointment was approved.

colonel steve kleinman was a career military intelligence officer he's recognized as a leading expert on the interrogation of terror suspects the message we send in the world that some years of all the torture has been rewarded again with most arguably one of the most prestigious if not the most prestigious position on tells us merely how we how can we sending our cia director who have all the torture to work with with a senior intelligence official from another part of the world where torture is common and for for her to ever tried to chastise them to try to get a different way that well they'll say well you did it. yes but she says she says she wouldn't she wouldn't that the cia did. well on i'm sorry i don't believe are the critics what would she do if donald trump was to go to the cia to reintroduce torture. they said what do you think of waterboarding i said i think we absolutely

need it we should have it and if we can't we should have worse. no doubt doll trump would get her out of the way posthaste if she objected and put someone in there who wouldn't do. the hard fact is that during his election campaign president trump faced down a bomb that erroll opposition to torture torture works ok folks torture but you don't have these guys torture doesn't work believe me it works ok waterboarding is your minor form some people say it's not actually torture let's assume it is but they asked me the question what do you think waterboarding absolutely fine but we should go much stronger than waterboarding that's the way i feel not fallon has more than thirty years experience as a special agent with the n.c.a.a.'s the u.s. naval criminal investigative service he's investigated some of the maize to significant terrorist operations in u.s. history he's wrong throughout torture does work for what if you want propaganda

if i want to tell if i want to get you to tell me something that i want to hear i can get are you torture you what it's in effect about is getting the truth torture as a tactic is not only ineffective it's counterproductive and it's dangerous it cost lives. newsday experts we spoke to agreed as a means of getting accurate intelligence torture simply doesn't work victims will say anything to stop the torture including full screen fashions and fabrications if you look through the history of torture it was used for one thing and one thing only political or religious oppression to intimidate to threaten to keep people why . the white house declined to comment on president trump's endorsement of torture the cia declined to respond to questions about gina hospital suitability for her cia role and referred us to her confirmation hearings where she said i would not

support the use of enhanced interrogation techniques when asked what she do if the president gave her a direct order to waterboard a terrorist suspect she said i do not believe the president would ask me to do that . in september twenty eighth seen in north carolina's campaign as a major report on their state's role in facilitating the cia's torture program it was the culmination of eighteen months of detailed investigations public hearings and the contribution of dozens of expert witnesses including the former un rapporteurs on torture and a former guantanamo detainee mohammed who will slahi. the report was a devastating indictment calling on the state governor liberal thora to his and politicians to finally take

a stand against torture with their methods loudly and clear under now. what we tolerate then you remain true. other human being. it also calls for an investigation into the north carolina company erik contract is . are they participating in the illegal kidnapping and disappearance of prisoners overseas we have no idea and they certainly could do it again if a future u.s. administration introduced this program. we wanted to ask eric contract his about their business today offering what they call specialized past. and cargo transport haitian solutions to customers around the globe we rate to three formal pilots and even called on them but no one would speak. i'm sorry is not. could could we talk to him.

not there. we also contacted every contract his management who didn't reply so we called on lawyer lamar armstrong listed for many years as a senior management representative of every contract is we wanted to get his reaction to the revelations in the north carolina reporting to torture and the stated role of eric. we sent an e-mail to mr armstrong mr lamar armstrong representative of eric contractors'. thank you very much thanks a lot charlie was you not interested because it's just not right he's going to call the police believe he doesn't want to talk about the aircraft operated by eric contractors that played a federal role in the torture program a seven three seven boeing business jet originally numbered yes literally one

cleveland how can we say. oh it has the police. my name sarah spiller from al-jazeera television the little who thought this is it was. so mr armstrong threatened to call the police when we asked him for an interview as a representative of contract is an idiot he has called the police not just one call two cars have a right here i'm a thank you gets me through thank you but by that same day at the courthouse in smithfield north carolina campaigners distributed copies of their report to local elected county commissioners over the years campaigners have improved to these commissioners to investigate activities at the local airport. a respected local minister tried to ask a simple question about what come pain and say is north carolina's complicity in torture and we are here tonight to ask you smithfield county commissioners can

you say with us. we are wrong. a knife. think that. in the face of silence we put our questions when making a film about the secret cia rendition paid them do commission is believe that torture is morally acceptable and that you think that is missing and. i would say anything about torture be accepted was think there was anything illegal going on on the iraq war so i asked the chairman of the benito job about seven year for question my answer is of the morning is this your event you're going to have this hijacking bother getting that opinion others up here question seem think the hope is naive question on the is there anything else anybody else respect her dresses for with her trying to just kill the business.

despite the deafening silence here the demands for the truth about the cia program about torture continue. in the next part of this investigation we visit one ton of obey cuba the new taurus u.s. naval base u.s. president trump has vowed to keep open. we investigate claims that secrecy about past torture is impeding the quest for justice after nine eleven. and we traveled to morocco to meet the family of a gun totting no prisoner cleared for release but like others still incarcerated by the u.s. administration and we are asking what the future holds under president donald j. trump. president trump who is a man rode with torture who has

a thirst for good calorie arme afraid that we're setting the conditions to return back to practice of brutality and state sponsored torture as we did done in the past. business of.

business.