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February 02, 2009
And Dana Priest Was Mysteriously Unavailable For Comment, Part II
Despite ordering the closure of Guantanamo and an end to harsh interrogation techniques, the new president has failed to call an end to secret abductions and questioning.In his first few days in office, Mr Obama was lauded for rejecting policies of the George W Bush era, but it has emerged the CIA still has the authority to carry out renditions in which suspects are picked up and often sent to a third country for questioning.
The practice caused outrage at the EU, after it was revealed the CIA had used secret prisons in Romania and Poland and airports such as Prestwick in Scotland to conduct up to 1,200 rendition flights. The European Parliament called renditions "an illegal instrument used by the United States".
According to a detailed reading of the executive orders signed by Mr Obama on Jan 22, renditions have not been outlawed, with the new administration deciding it needs to retain some devices in Mr Bush's anti-terror arsenal amid continued threats to US national security.
"Obviously you need to preserve some tools – you still have to go after the bad guys," an administration official told the Los Angeles Times.
"The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."
Section 2 (g) of the order, appears to allow the US authorities to continue detaining and interrogating terror suspects as long as it does not hold them for long periods. It reads: "The terms "detention facilities" and "detention facility" in section 4(a) of this order do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."
You have to admire the stalwart determination of Lefties to ignore the renditions that occurred on Bill Clinton's watch. What a difference 8 years makes:
Muntassir al-Zayyat, an Egyptian lawyer who represented four of the suspects seized in Albania, told The Times that "all were subjected to torture."
Two of the suspects -- Ahmed Ibrahim al-Naggar and Ahmed Ismail Uthman -- were executed in 1999, while two others -- Shawky Salama Mostafa and Mohammed Hassan Mahoud -- remain in prison, Mr. al-Zayyat said.
The men were suspected of plotting an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, Albania, and coordinating actions with a cell in Egypt. Mr. al-Zayyat told Human Rights Watch that these suspects were taken to "ghost villas."
Al-Naggar, according to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, was blindfolded for most of his nine-month detention. At one point, he was locked in a room for 24 hours with dirty water up to his knees.
During interrogation, his "hands were tied behind his back and his feet were shackled as security agents applied electric shocks to different parts of his body," the organization said.
From the Human Rights Watch report:
The London-based Islamic Observation Center, an organization that tracks the treatment of suspected Islamist militants, reported that Shawqi Salama Mustafa was held for several weeks in a room filled with water up to his knees, and he was also subjected to electroshock during interrogation. His interrogators tied his legs together and suspended him from the ceiling several times, and also dragged him from room to room with his face to the floor. The security forces also threatened to rape him during interrogation. Mustafa received a twenty-five year sentence.[82]`Issam `Abd al-Tawab `Abd al-Alim was held incommunicado from July 13 to September 12, 1998. During his sixty-day detention, `Abd al-Alim was allegedly beaten by his interrogators during questioning. He received a fifteen-year sentence.[83]
Muhammad Hassan Mahmud Tita spent just under two months in incommunicado detention, and finally appeared before the Prosecutor General in mid-September. He told both the prosecutor and his lawyer that he was subjected to electroshock on several parts of his body while being hung from the ceiling. Tita was sentenced to ten years in prison.[84]
But that was then. This is now.
Human rights watch, (having previously called for a permanent end to the rendition program and a full accounting of all detainees rendered since 2001 - so much for those poor unfortunates rendered during the Clinton years!) is ready to let bygones be bygones. Kiss-kiss. All is forgiven:
Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed a public hearing in an official court. "Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance," Malinowski said (emphasis added).
Notably, not one word in the Washington Post this morning. Dana Priest's outrage seems to have cooled considerably.
I am shocked.... shocked. But then the Obama administration promises to ensure these detainees' "rights" are respected.... this is, you see, all a matter of applying the proper definitions; ones that allow us to pretend we're not really doing what we're doing:
Obama officials, of course, are a different story: ...It's important, here, to note that extraordinary rendition is not the same as rendition proper. Rendition is just moving people from one jurisdiction (in the cases at hand, one country) to another; includes all sorts of perfectly normal things, like extradition, which are not problematic legally. Extraordinary rendition is rendition outside these established legal processes: e.g., kidnapping someone abroad so that s/he can be brought to the US to stand trial, or delivering someone to another country to be tortured.The author of the Times article, however, defines "rendition" as "secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States." It's not clear whether he knows that rendition includes perfectly normal things like extradition. It's also not clear that he knows that extraordinary rendition includes not just cases in which we transfer a detainee to another country, but cases in which we capture someone abroad and take them to this country to be tried.
Reconcile that, if you can, with the Obama administration's load of rhetorical horse hockey.
Rendition is, as Al Gore rightly observed, an inherently extrajudicial procedure. We do it because we don't have enough evidence to pick these people up and process them via our own justice system: because, while there may be very good evidence against them, it isn't the kind that will stand up in an American court of law. So what all this talk of "official courts" really means is that we want to find courts that will afford detainees fewer rights than they would receive if we held and tried them.
Again, thank God they're not being sent through those 'kangaroo courts' at Gitmo because we need to give them all the rights due an American citizen:
If the LA Times is right to claim that the Obama administration has left open the possibility of extraordinary renditions, that would be a huge problem. However, I don't think it is. Here it helps to have spent some time reading the actual orders. The order called "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations" contains the following passage:"Sec. 6. Construction with Other Laws. Nothing in this order shall be construed to affect the obligations of officers, employees, and other agents of the United States Government to comply with all pertinent laws and treaties of the United States governing detention and interrogation, including but not limited to: the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution; the Federal torture statute, 18 U.S.C. 2340 2340A; the War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. 2441; the Federal assault statute, 18 U.S.C. 113; the Federal maiming statute, 18 U.S.C. 114; the Federal "stalking" statute, 18 U.S.C. 2261A; articles 93, 124, 128, and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. 893, 924, 928, and 934; section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, 42 U.S.C. 2000dd; section 6(c) of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Public Law 109 366; the Geneva Conventions; and the Convention Against Torture. Nothing in this order shall be construed to diminish any rights that any individual may have under these or other laws and treaties."
...not.
If I understand this correctly, the Obama administration wants to keep a valuable tool against terrorism that specifies:
1. We can't hold people for very long.
2. We can use only the most non-coercive interrogation techniques (why would a dangerous terrorist betray his colleagues if he knows he can't be held for long, can't be coerced, and can't be sent to countries that torture?)
3. We can't even threaten to send them to countries that would treat them worse than we are allowed to by law (if the executive order can be believed).
4. And though this technique was invented precisely for situations where there is insufficient evidence to detain and interrogate, or to obtain a conviction in an American court of law, not to worry! Detainees will still be tried in an "official court" that respects all their Constitutional rights! (So this means they'll be released?)
Somehow, I am not seeing the logic in this plan. Perhaps the comforting vagueness has something to do with that.
Look for the New York Times to leak a classified memo any day now with the full details. It's that whole accountability journalism thing, you know. That's what the Fourth Estate do.
Posted by Cassandra at February 2, 2009 08:29 AM
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