{"id":5222,"date":"2009-02-11T20:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T19:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=5222"},"modified":"2009-02-11T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T19:17:00","slug":"a-call-to-end-all-renditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/a-call-to-end-all-renditions\/","title":{"rendered":"A Call to End All Renditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Marjorie Cohn, Jurist<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year. Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a person is abducted without any legal proceedings and transferred to a foreign country for detention and interrogation, often tortured.<\/p>\n

Mohamed and four other plaintiffs are accusing Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. of flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. In Mohamed\u2019s case, two British justices accused the Bush administration of pressuring the British government to block the release of evidence that was \u201crelevant to allegations of torture\u201d of Mohamed.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five lines edited out of the court documents included details about how Mohamed\u2019s genitals were sliced with a scalpel as well as other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding \u201cis very far down the list of things they did,\u201d according to a British official quoted by the Telegraph (UK).<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs\u2019 complaint quotes a former Jeppesen employee as saying, \u201cWe do all of the extraordinary rendition flights \u2014 you know, the torture flights.\u201d A senior company official also apparently admitted the company transported people to countries where they would be tortured.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s Justice Department appeared before a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday in the Jeppesen lawsuit. But instead of making a clean break with the dark policies of the Bush years, the Obama administration claimed the same \u201cstate secrets\u201d privilege that Bush used to block inquiry into his policies of torture and illegal surveillance. Claiming that the extraordinary rendition program is a state secret is disingenuous since it is has been extensively documented in the media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course,\u201d said the ACLU\u2019s Ben Wizner, counsel for the five men.<\/p>\n

If the judges accept Obama’s state secrets claim, these men will be denied their day in court and precluded from any recovery for the damages they suffered as a result of extraordinary rendition.<\/p>\n

Two and a half weeks before Obama\u2019s representative appeared in the Jeppesen case, the new President had signed Executive Order 13491. It established a special task force \u201cto study and evaluate the practices of transferring individuals to other nations in order to ensure that such practices comply with the domestic laws, international obligations, and policies of the United States and do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture or otherwise for the purpose, or with the effect, of undermining or circumventing the commitments or obligations of the United States to ensure the humane treatment of individuals in its custody or control.\u201d<\/p>\n

This order prohibits extraordinary rendition. It also ensures humane treatment of persons in U.S. custody or control. But it doesn\u2019t specifically guarantee that prisoners the United States renders to other countries will be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that doesn\u2019t amount to torture. It does, however, aim to ensure that our government\u2019s practices of transferring people to other countries complies with U.S. laws and policies, including our obligations under international law.<\/p>\n

One of those laws is the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty the United States ratified in 1992. Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits the States Parties from subjecting persons \u201cto torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.\u201d The Human Rights Committee, which is the body that monitors the ICCPR, has interpreted that prohibition to forbid States Parties from exposing \u201cindividuals to the danger of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment upon return to another country by way of their extradition, expulsion or refoulement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Order 13491 also mandates, \u201cThe CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.\u201d The order does not define \u201cexpeditiously\u201d and the definitional section of the order says that the terms \u2018detention facilities\u2019 and \u2018detention facility\u2019 \u201cdo not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.\u201d Once again, \u201cshort term\u201d and \u201ctransitory\u201d are not defined.<\/p>\n

In his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder categorically stated that the United States should not turn over an individual to a country where we have reason to believe he will be tortured. Leon Panetta, nominee for CIA director, went further and interpreted Order 13491 as forbidding \u201cthat kind of extraordinary rendition, where we send someone for the purposes of torture or for actions by another country that violate our human values.\u201d<\/p>\n

But alarmingly, Panetta appeared to champion the same standard used by the Bush administration, which reportedly engaged in extraordinary rendition 100 to 150 times as of March 2005. After September 11, 2001, President Bush issued a classified directive that expanded the CIA\u2019s authority to render terrorist suspects to other States. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the CIA and the State Department received assurances that prisoners will be treated humanely. \u201cI will seek the same kinds of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely,\u201d Panetta told the senators.<\/p>\n

Gonzales had admitted, however, \u201cWe can\u2019t fully control what that country might do. We obviously expect a country to whom we have rendered a detainee to comply with their representations to us . . . If you\u2019re asking me, \u2018Does a country always comply?\u2019 I don\u2019t have an answer to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer is no. Binyam Mohamed\u2019s case is apparently the tip of the iceberg. Maher Arar, a Canadian born in Syria, was apprehended by U.S. authorities in New York on September 26, 2002, and transported to Syria, where he was brutally tortured for months. Arar used an Arabic expression to describe the pain he experienced: \u201cyou forget the milk that you have been fed from the breast of your mother.\u201d The Canadian government later exonerated Arar of any terrorist ties. Thirteen CIA operatives were arrested in Italy for kidnapping an Egyptian, Abu Omar, in Milan and transporting him to Cairo where he was tortured.<\/p>\n

Panetta made clear that the CIA will continue to engage in rendition to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects and transfer them to other countries. \u201cIf we capture a high-value prisoner,\u201d he said, \u201cI believe we have the right to hold that individual temporarily to be able to debrief that individual and make sure that individual is properly incarcerated.\u201d No clarification of how long is \u201ctemporarily\u201d or what \u201cdebrief\u201d would mean.<\/p>\n

When Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) asked about the Clinton administration\u2019s use of the CIA to transfer prisoners to countries where they were later executed, Panetta replied, \u201cI think that is an appropriate use of rendition.\u201d Jane Mayer, columnist for the New Yorker, has documented numerous instances of extraordinary rendition during the Clinton administration, including cases in which suspects were executed in the country to which the United States had rendered them. Once when Richard Clarke, President Clinton\u2019s chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, \u201cproposed a snatch,\u201d Vice-President Al Gore said, \u201cThat\u2019s a no-brainer. Of course it\u2019s a violation of international law, that\u2019s why it\u2019s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a slippery slope between ordinary rendition and extraordinary rendition. \u201cRendition has to end,\u201d Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! \u201cRendition is a violation of sovereignty. It\u2019s a kidnapping. It\u2019s force and violence.\u201d Ratner queried whether Cuba could enter the United States and take Luis Posada, the man responsible for blowing up a commercial Cuban airline in 1976 and killing 73 people. Or whether the United States could go down to Cuba and kidnap Assata Shakur, who escaped a murder charge in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Moreover, \u201crenditions for the most part weren\u2019t very productive,\u201d a former CIA official told the Los Angeles Times. After a prisoner was turned over to authorities in Egypt, Jordan or another country, the CIA had very little influence over how prisoners were treated and whether they were ultimately released.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government should disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001. Those who ordered renditions should be prosecuted. And the special task force should recommend, and Obama should agree to, an end to all renditions.<\/p>\n

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. Her new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd), will be published in April 2009. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marjorie Cohn, Jurist\u00a0 Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year. Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[51],"class_list":{"0":"post-5222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"tag-torture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}