What the terminus of the American renditions program looks like

The American program in the rendition of international prisoners is and has always been a secret program. Reportedly the CIA has been sending prisoners off to other countries "for questioning." That is, what cannot be done to prisoners on American soil by American officials can be left to the devices of the police in other countries who have no similar legal restrictions. Egypt has for some time been one of those places to which prisoners were "renditioned." What took place there was a black hole.

The Egyptian protesters are now finding and exposing what at lest two of those locations for interrogating prisoners look like, in Cairo and Alexandria. An ABC report on what the Egyptians are finding in the chambers of the secret police are sobering -- and should embarrass the United States.

Barbara Miller of ABC reports what these Egyptian young people are finding.

"the documents they found contain evidence of phone-tapping, election-rigging and torture."

One person said of the Egyptian State security,

it "has never served to protect this state's security. It's real function was to protect the regime. The state security was never there to protect us. All they did was set their thugs on us and spy on us."

Another said,

"We want it dissolved and turned into an information gathering authority, nothing more. We don't need them to torture people and label them terrorists".

This is what they found in these torture chambers:

"We found torture tools. Basically in one of the rooms we found a number of electric shocks. It is not the usual electric shock that we used to see with some of these officers, ..." "This time it was a bit long, it was black. The electric rods at the end of it were a bit like the teeth of some animal or something. It was really outstanding and if you turn it on there is a blue type of a spark that starts working and former detainees showed us how it actually, how it was used on them.
"Another torture tool was basically a cube-like frame made of rods and sticks attached to it and there is an electricity charger attached to this structure with some electricity plugs.
"There are a number of ways that detainees used to be tortured using this device. The thing was so scary, some people started crying after seeing all this."
…
"We found also plans for rigging the elections, the parliamentary elections in 2010," he said.
"Exact plans telling how many votes will go to each candidate in every district in the country and how the state security and some state security agents working in the media are going to support certain candidates."

Miller says that some of the protesters were attacked by men with knives. Who could they be? Who was paying them? Or were these merely criminals? The situation is still fluid.

"It is the first time since the fall of Mr Mubarak last month that there have been reports of a violent crackdown on protesters."