In January 2004 a crew of CIA agents checked into the five-star Marriott Son Antem golfing resort in Palma for a well-deserved rest. The agents had just flown from Rabat in Morocco to Afghanistan and back to Algeria - a gruelling 8,000-mile journey - and were looking forward to luxuriating in the hotel's spa where, as the brochure put it, they could "journey to deep inner peace".

But as the crew were basking in comfort at US taxpayers' expense there was little peace for their cargo. In the hold on that day was Benyam Mohammed, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee alleged to be one of the world's most dedicated jihadists. In Morocco, Mohammed would later allege, he had been doused in hot liquids, subjected to incessant loud noise and had his penis slashed with a scalpel.

The details of Mohammed's treatment emerges in Ghost Plane, a new book by investigative journalist Stephen Grey describing the CIA's clandestine system of international terrorist transfers known as extraordinary rendition.

The Marriott Son Antem was not the only luxury hotel in Palma frequented by CIA agents. The rendition crews also liked to stop off at the Gran Melia Victoria, a five-star hotel in the centre of the Majorcan capital. On one occasion, they ordered three bottles of fine Spanish wine, and five crystal glasses from Mallorcair, one of the plane's ground handling agents - refreshments for the flight home, all charged to the CIA's bill.

Agents displayed a similar taste for luxury in Milan where Italian prosecutors accuse the CIA of involvement in the seizure and rendering of Abu Omar, a radical Egyptian cleric, to Cairo in 2003. Italian investigators found the CIA agents spent nearly $150,000 (£80,000) on accommodation. Two spent nearly $18,000 during a three-week stay at Milan's Savoy hotel.

But the US secret service operatives' indiscretions meant the task of the Italians investigating the kidnapping of Abu Omar was made simple.

CIA officers frequently called each other's hotels and many of the 22 CIA agents allegedly involved had "frequent flyer" numbers or hotel loyalty cards so they could earn points during their stay in the Italian fashion capital. Among itemised phone bills discovered by Italian counter-terrorism police was one showing 156 calls had been made to a landline in Milan. This led them to the US consulate.

Another example of the indiscretions and contradictions in the US administration's rendition programme emerges in its willingness to lavish money on entertaining the Syrians.

In December 2002, Syrian president Bashar Assad and his wife paid an official visit to London. They were guests of honour at the City of London.

But back in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on that same day in December 2002, seven prisoners were languishing in jail, sent there by the US despite President George Bush's view that Syria was part of an "axis of evil" with a legacy of "torture, oppression, misery, and ruin". There is clear evidence the seven rendered there by the US were brutally tortured.

One, Maher Arar, abducted with the help of Canada, was freed after more than nine months when he signed a false confession that he had trained at a camp in Afghanistan.

For Mr Arar, the contrast between his treatment and the Syrian president's is likely to be a bitter pill to swallow.