RSS
Home
US and European courts wrestle with 'rendition' cases, reach different conclusions
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
AP Photo/Luca Bruno
Rendition Facts
- The first rendition took place in 1995, when Abu Talal al-Qasimi was sent from Croatia to Egypt, where he was eventually executed
- In 2007, CIA director Michael Hayden put the total number of renditions somewhere between 100 and 200
- The CIA still has not accounted for some 39 prisoners 'renderred' since 9/11
On Monday, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Canadian Maher Arar's lawsuit against the United States government, which he claims deported him to Syria in 2002.
Just yesterday, the BBC reported that an Italian judge had found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty in the kidnapping of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr and his subsequent deportation to Egypt.
Maher Arar, who was held in Syria for a year on suspicion of connections to Al-Qaeda terrorists, remained imprisoned in Syria for a year before he was released. Cleric Nasr was held in an Egyptian prison for four years. Both claim they were tortured.
The policy was 'extraordinary rendition,' the practice of deporting suspected terrorists to Middle Eastern regimes, against their will, to face imprisonment and almost certain torture at the hands of brutal state security services, all without so much as a pretense of due legal process. European nations such as Germany and Italy were also aware of and often complicit in renditions of their citizens, though public backlashes eventually forced them to distance themselves from the program.
Journalist and author Stephen Grey, who wrote the book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA's Rendition and Torture Program, insists that "[t]he CIA only carries out renditions with the approval of lawyers, after a file of evidence is assembled about a prisoner," but adds that "evidence of guilt based on secret intelligence can be unreliable." He cites the case of a German citizen who spent 18 weeks in solitary confinement at a CIA "black site" before then-CIA Director George Tenet authorized his release. Maher Arar is another example (long after his ordeal a Canadian court verified that he had no ties to al-Qaeda).
Grey also notes that the United States has 'renderred' prisoners to "outsource" their interrogation. One prominent example is Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda leader who was sent to Egypt for what former CIA Director Tenet euphemistically referred to as "further debriefing." Libi was supposedly returned to US custody after his "debriefing," yet his present whereabouts remain unkown.
Yesterday's Italian verdict is the first for a rendition legal case, and it sentenced Milan CIA Station Chief Robert Lady to eight years, 22 other Americans to five years in prison. The two Italian security officials convicted each drew three-year prison terms. The defendants must also pay monetary to damages to cleric Nasr and his family. Those damages exceed 1.5 million euros in total. All of the defendants are appealing their convictions.
A day before that, however, an American court soundly refused to allow rendition-related suits in a 7-4 decision, according to the New York Times. The basis for the decision was that "Congress has not authorized such suits." Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote that the government's executive branch should "decide how to implement extraordinary rendition, and [the] elected members of Congress [...] [should] decide whether an individual may seek compensation."
Maher Arar, one-time 'renderred' prisoner, commented that
In simple terms, today’s decision means that United States government’s agents can commit human rights violations in any part of the world and the courts will always find a legal justification for these agents to escape accountability. I am afraid to say that these courts have lost the purpose of their existence.
Washington, meanwhile, remained largely silent on the CIA convictions in Italy. The State Department was "disappointed by the verdicts," while the CIA refused to comment.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
.jpg)
