Extraordinary RenditionThe US government's abduction, transportation and detention of terror suspects isn't just illegal, it's morally indefensible
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The Bush administration's practice of "extraordinary rendition" - the illegal abduction and transport of terrorism suspects for detention at what the CIA calls "black sites" where they are held incommunicado and tortured - has finally received the international attention and condemnation it has long deserved. Under pressure from the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, European governments are being forced to reveal records of private jets used by CIA front companies passing through European Union airspace and routinely using EU airports on these rendition missions. Prague's Ruzyně Airport has been one of them, used at least 20 times by three of these planes, according to Amnesty International, and airport authorities have confirmed the jets identified landed here. While European countries have indeed revealed this information, the governments involved still refuse to acknowledge they have been complicit in any wrongdoing. The front company technique is familiar to anyone who remembers the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s over the covert, illegal trafficking of drugs and weapons by the CIA in Nicaragua (and, before that, during Vietnam). Those involved in the Iran-Contra crimes were subsequently pardoned by US President George H.W. Bush, father of the current occupant of the US presidency. The Bush family legacy of impunity is bearing far uglier fruit today. The administration of George W. Bush insists that extraordinary rendition is lawful, while EU governments sidestep the issue; from the human rights perspective, both approaches are invalid. Rendition involves the crime of abduction, and this "extraordinary" version of it involves torture. That the torture of one human being by another is always and everywhere wrong is an inviolable principle flowing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and thousands of years of common sense). The fact that some countries have no legislation against it and practice it does not make it acceptable to perform torture in those places, and no law approving torture - or disguising it by some other name - will ever be worth adhering to. No "law enforcement," "intelligence," or "security" argument in support of torture can ever be anything but inhumane. After their own investigation of the facts, human rights organizations have now taken an uncompromising stand on this issue. The American Civil Liberties Union has called on the United Nations to conduct a full investigation into the practice. Amnesty International says the United States "is manipulating commercial arrangements in order to be able to transfer people in violation of international law." Their latest report demonstrates the lengths to which the US government has gone to conceal the fact that these abductions have been taking place. The Bush administration is one of the most secretive in US history; at times it seems to view the executive branch of government as its own private property. While rumors of these abductions began to circulate shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the facts have indeed remained concealed for quite some time. Yet even in the wake of scandals about Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, the US attorney general and other administration officials have continued to be surprisingly bold about discussing the "option" of torture, even as they simultaneously reject all allegations that they have anything to do with it. "We do not torture" is about to become as much of a laugh line for this administration as "I did not have sex with that woman" was for Clinton. What is not funny is the evidence that the United States does commit torture and that, despite this, Bush is still in office. The Bush administration's cavalier approach to human rights principles is undemocratic in the extreme. We must never forget that it is a hallmark of totalitarian governments to develop elaborate legal arguments to confer legitimacy to human rights violations. The hair-splitting legal dancing over "enemy combatant" status; the stomach-turning term "torture light," used by apologists for the administration; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's reference to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint" when he was White House counsel during Bush's first term; this is all just a fancy way of saying, "We do as we please, so get used to it, and we expect you to blindly believe we are doing this to those who 'deserve' it." Binyam Muhammad, an Ethiopian captured in 2002 and detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2004, made his first appearance in a US military courtroom last week. After four years in custody he has been charged with conspiring to attack US civilians. Muhammad's lawyer claims not only that Muhammad is innocent, but that his genitals were mutilated with a scalpel in torture sessions overseen by Americans after the United States delivered him to Morocco. Even if Muhammad did in fact conspire as charged, torturing him once he has been apprehended is a pointless exercise that violates his rights and renders his entire trial morally illegitimate. There is a larger purpose being served by Guantanamo Bay, one that has nothing to do with gathering intelligence. Abducting suspects, detaining them indefinitely without charge and torturing them is about the arbitrary wielding of governmental power in defiance of international human rights protections. The one common feature of the revelations from the Guantanamo trials (themselves legally suspect) and the testimony of those who have been released from Guantanamo Bay without being charged is the arbitrary nature both of the length of the detentions and the treatment given the detainees. The Bush administration has asked the world to believe that because these men were detained in countries associated with terrorism, the United States is perfectly justified in violating all principles of due process. The primary purpose served by these detentions has been to demonstrate that the administration can treat people this way with impunity. Torture as a tool of US foreign policy has never been extraordinary; the recent history of most of Latin America is ample proof. Guantanamo Bay has become a test of how long the rest of the world will let this experiment continue in the name of the "war on terrorism." Fortunately, the ACLU, Amnesty International, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have stepped up to the plate to call for a halt. One would think that such gross violations of human rights would lead to such a scandal as to force Bush administration officials from office. Though it is long past time this administration and all those who facilitated these illegal and immoral acts be held to account, recent attempts by Democrat legislators to either impeach or censure the president have received no support from their fellow Democrats. Whether this is due to moral cowardice or expediency is irrelevant: The point is that US democracy is failing to control the executive while Bush repeats the mantra of the "war on terrorism" and does as he pleases with impunity. In this regard it is highly encouraging that retired US General Anthony Zinni, commander-in-chief of the US Central Command in charge of all US troops in the Middle East from 1997 to 2000, has broken ranks with the administration over the war in Iraq and is asking for "heads to roll." Heads should not only roll over that colossal blunder, but extraordinary rendition should be halted, the torturers brought to justice and the victims of these violations properly compensated for what they have suffered. • The author is the director of Liga lidských práv (League of Human Rights); this article originally appeared in The Prague Post |
Article added on Mon 24th Apr, 2006 [last updated Mon 24th Apr, 2006]Share this page 
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