U.S. relies more on aid of allies in terror cases

WASHINGTON — The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former U.S. government officials.

The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.

In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with al-Qaida have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former U.S. counterterrorism official said.

In addition, Pakistan's intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with the help of U.S. intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani officials said. The two are the highest-ranking Qaida operatives captured since President Barack Obama took office, but they are still being held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States, the official said.

The current approach, which began in the last two years of the Bush administration and has gained momentum under Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed the secret prisons run by the CIA, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons.

Human rights advocates say that relying on foreign governments to hold and question terrorist suspects could carry significant risks. It could increase the potential for abuse at the hands of foreign interrogators and could also yield bad intelligence, they say.

The fate of many terrorist suspects whom the Bush administration sent to foreign countries remains uncertain. One suspect, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by the CIA in late 2001 and sent to Libya, was recently reported to have died there in Libyan custody.

"As a practical matter you have to rely on partner governments, so the focus should be on pressing and assisting those governments to handle those cases professionally," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.