CAIRO, July 25 (IslamOnline.net) - US security agents have been involved in forcible secret deportation of "terror suspects" before and after the 9/11 attacks from different countries to their homelands, where they can be detained or interrogated without all the legal protections available in their host countries, a US paper revealed Sunday, July 25.

CIA officials have testified in Congress about engaging in 70 such operations before September 2001, but the case of two Egyptians deported on a special US plane from Sweden to Egypt in the wake of the terrorist attacks indicated that more "extraordinary renditions" have taken place, the Washington Post said.

Quoting a police officer at Stockholm's Bromma Airport, the daily said Ahmad Agiza and Mohammad Zery were guarded by two CIA officers and a half-dozen hooded agents along with two uniformed Swedish officers on December 18, 2001.

Paul Forell, the police officer on duty at that night, recalled how the hooded agents cut off the clothes of the two Egyptians with scissors, changed them into red overalls and bound them with handcuffs and leg irons.

"When they gave orders to each other, they kept their voices down. It seemed like they had done this before. They were very professional," he remarked.

According to a declassified Swedish memo, the pair, asylum seekers, had been grabbed on the street without warning by 5 p.m. and were in the air by 9:47 p.m.

Their lawyers were not officially notified of their expulsion until after a US-registered Cairo-bound Gulfstream V jet had departed, to prevent them from filing appeals, the Post added.

The US involvement remained a secret until two months ago, when a Swedish television program broadcast a documentary reporting that US agents assisted in the apprehension of the two and that the plane chartered to Cairo had been used in a previous rendition case in Pakistan.

Critics, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Post that the US administration is engaging in practices abroad that would be illegal and unconstitutional at home.

The fate of the two Egyptian men offers a rare glimpse into such a case, as well as an example of what can go wrong, said the daily.

Records and interviews show that the agreement between Swedish and Egyptian authorities -- that the pair should receive human treatment --was broken almost as soon as the two arrived in Cairo.

Their lawyers, relatives and human rights groups said there is credible evidence that they were regularly subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture.

Agiza's mother, Hamida Shalaby, said he told her during separate visits that he was given electric shocks and that prison doctors tried to cover up scars on his body by applying a special cream.

"He couldn't even pick up his arms to hug me," she said in an interview. "He was very slow and very tired and very weak."

Agiza was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a military tribunal after a trial that lasted less than six hours, while Zery spent almost two years behind bars without being charged, the American daily said.

Swedish government officials now say the forced deportation was an embarrassing mistake.

The government has called for an international investigation, possibly under the authority of the United Nations, into how the two men were treated.

Separately, the Swedish parliament has opened an internal probe to determine the exact role played by US intelligence agents, according to the Post.

"We have taken the allegations seriously, very seriously," Deputy Foreign Minister Hans Dahlgren said in an interview in Stockholm.

"We have asked for an independent, international investigation. . . . It would be in the best interests of the government of Egypt to do this " if the allegations are false.

The Swedish government has released previously classified documents that confirm the American role.

In a memo, dated February 7, 2002, a partial reconstruction of the case by the Swedish security police noted that "the American side" had offered to help in the deportation "by lending a plane for the transport".

In addition, lawyers from the Swedish Justice Ministry wrote in a separate memo on April 12, 2002 that "the transport from Sweden to Egypt was carried out with the help of American authorities."

Advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to open an inquiry into the case.

"The Swedish government is facing a very hard situation now," said Hafez Abu-Seada, secretary general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.

"Their reputation as a leading human rights nation is at stake."