In other news, a former US counterterrorism agent is claiming the CIA’s rendition program to capture terror suspects and question them on foreign soil was launched under former President Bill Clinton. In an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran who resigned last year, said : “President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clarke ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda. We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said ’That’s up to you’.”

In February, investigative journalist Jane Meyer reported the Clinton administration carried out rendition operations as early as 1995. Meyer reported US agents helped kidnap wanted Egyptian terror suspect Qassem in Zagreb in Croatia. He was sent back to Egypt, where he was reportedly executed.