LA Times: Blood on Our Hands

[realFedUp]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-torture6oct06,1,623542.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

Blood on Our Hands

October 6, 2004

Despite a last-minute hesitation by the Bush administration, the House may still take up provisions that would allow U.S. officials to ship terror suspects to countries that permit torture. If this language, attached to the larger intelligence reform bill, survives, it would shred the international treaty against torture that the United States signed on to 20 years ago. Beyond the diplomatic fallout, it would mock any claim to moral high ground offered up to justify the war in Iraq.

The House measure allows what is legally called "extraordinary rendition," a comfy abstraction that essentially means to torture by proxy. The Senate's intelligence reform bill fortunately has no such provision.

Torture by proxy seems already to have been applied to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria. The computer technician was arrested between international flights at John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002 on suspicion of being a member of Al Qaeda. After 13 days of interrogation, federal officials expelled him to Syria. There, Arar said, he was held for 10 months in a "grave-sized cell" and beaten and tortured before Syrian officials decided he was innocent and released him.

snip

The American Bar Assn. is incensed by the House's apparent willingness to bless torture by proxy. Its pressure seems to have pushed Alberto Gonzales, the president's chief lawyer, into publicly distancing the administration from the measure.

continued

[indigobusiness]

1. 'Torture by Proxy'

Now that has a real Bushco ring to it.

[struggle4progress]

2. Delivering people into the hands of torturers (November 16, 2003!)

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published November 16, 2003


<snip> Under a practice known as "extraordinary rendition," the CIA is delivering terror suspects into the hands of foreign intelligence services without extradition proceedings. According to the Post, the authority to do this comes from a secret "finding" by the president.

Suspects have been sent to Syria, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, countries whose abusive practices have been documented and condemned by the State Department's annual human rights report. "We don't kick the s-- out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s-- out of them," an unnamed official who had participated in the rendering of prisoners told the Post. Along with the prisoner, the CIA provides the foreign intelligence services a list of questions it wants answered.

Torture is illegal in the United States, by law, Constitution and international convention. Not only may the United States not engage in the practice - even in wartime - the law explicitly prohibits sending a person to another nation where there is good reason to believe he might be tortured.

This is why the administration has been so cagey about its tactics. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been trying to get answers, but the administration officially denies what it is doing. "United States policy is to obtain specific assurances from the receiving country that it will not torture the individual being transferred to that country," wrote William Haynes II, general counsel of the Defense Department, in response to Leahy's queries. <snip>

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/11/16/Columns/Delivering_people_int.shtml

[struggle4progress]

3. American Bar Association Statement on 'Extraordinary Rendition' Provisions

of HR 10

9/30/2004 2:38:00 PM

Contact: Nancy Slonim of the American Bar Association, 312-988-6132 or [e-mail] or http://www.abanews.org

CHICAGO, Sept. 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Following is a statement of Robert J. Grey Jr., president, American Bar Association, regarding 'extraordinary rendition' provisions of HR 10:

The American Bar Association objects strongly to the inclusion of provisions authorizing "extraordinary rendition" in the House leadership's bill that purports to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations. These provisions would permit secretly transferring terrorist suspects to foreign countries known to use torture in interrogating prisoners. Extraordinary rendition not only violates all basic humanitarian and human rights standards, but violates U.S. treaty obligations which make clear that the U.S. government cannot avoid its obligations under international law by having other nations conduct unlawful interrogations in its stead. This practice not only violates our own cherished principles as a nation but also works to undermine our moral leadership in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Rejecting extraordinary rendition will demonstrate our respect for the rule of law and help protect American troops who may be detained by adversaries who may be disinclined to honor international obligations in light of the U.S. government's failure to honor its own.

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=37227