US CIA extraordinary renditions in and outside Europe

Extraordinary Rendition refers to the practice of transferring terror suspects from one country to another by means that bypass all judicial due process. After their secret transfer to selected countries, which do not care much for human rights or the due process, the suspects are subjected to brutal interrogation methods to gather information. Most such 'renditions' are initiated by the United States, although they are tacitly approved by several U.S. allies, and the objective is to gather intelligence about international terrorist networks by whatever means necessary without judicial oversight. Although the rendition policy for forcible transportation of terror suspects to other countries was started by the Clinton administration during the 1990s, it has considerably expanded in scope under the Bush administration especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As renditions are carried out in extreme secrecy by the CIA, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many people have suffered the fate in the last six years; some investigative journalists have suggested that the figure may run into hundreds. The U.S. administration stoutly defends the policy as necessary and legitimate for an effective fight against international terrorism but almost all human rights groups, as well as some foreign governments, condemn the rendition policy as illegal and immoral. In this research paper, I shall analyze the issue of extraordinary renditions by the U.S. And the CIA by looking at the types of rendition; tracing the history of the use of rendition by the U.S. government; describing the points-of-view of the U.S. government and human rights groups on the issue; and discussing the effect of the rendition policy on international law.

Types of Rendition

Rendition, in general, refers to surrender of a fugitive from one state to another; this is typically done through an extradition treaty by which one state surrenders a person within its territorial jurisdiction to a requesting state via a formal legal process (Garcia, p.1). Such transfers made in accordance with treaty or enabling statutes and through a prescribed procedure, may be termed "ordinary" renditions. On the other hand, the term "extraordinary rendition" is the extrajudicial transfer of a person from one state to another, generally for the purpose of arrest, detention, and/or interrogation by the receiving state (Ibid.) Hence, the crucial difference between ordinary rendition and extraordinary rendition is that the former lies within a judicial framework, while the latter is carried out extra-judicially.

The third type of rendition is the deportation of illegal aliens from a country under its immigration laws to the country of their origin. The basic difference between this type of rendition and extraordinary rendition is that such deportations are carried out under immigration laws and their removal is legal under relevant statutory provisions. The immigration laws in most European countries are much more liberal than in the United States as immigrants have the right to judicial review against such deportation orders. In the U.S. undesirable aliens may be removed "expeditiously" from the country under 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows only limited right of appeal. (Ibid, 3) it is pertinent to mention here that a number of people who have been deported to the country of their origin from the U.S. under immigration laws in the wake of 9/11, have also faced interrogation and incarceration as terror suspects, but it is important to remember that there is a clear difference between deportation under immigration laws and being subjected to extraordinary rendition.

History of Rendition in the United States

The founding fathers of the United States were firmly of the view that the executive had no authority to render a person to a foreign jurisdiction unless it was done pursuant to a treaty, or with the authority of enabling legislation. Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, while responding to a French request for the rendition of certain people accused of making war against France, wrote, "The laws of this country take no notice of crimes committed out of their jurisdiction. The most atrocious offender, coming within their pale, is received by them as an innocent man, and they have authorized no one to seize or deliver him." (Quoted by Weaver and Palitto, 104) Such high standards of human rights, of course, did not apply to the black slaves in the early part of American history, and the earliest example of the application of "extraordinary rendition" was the recapture of fugitive slaves from the "free states" to their slave-masters in the South before abolition (Begg, 19).

Another early case of "extraordinary rendition" in U.S. history is the "Arguellas Affair" in 1863, in which President Lincoln ordered the seizure and return of Arguelles to Cuba, despite having no extradition treaty with Spain (Weaver and Palitto, 107).

In more recent times, the need for 'rendering' terrorist suspects was again felt necessary. However, before 11 September 2001, rendition was largely aimed at returning suspected terrorists to the U.S.A. For trial. This rendition program gradually evolved into one in which terrorist suspects were rendered to third countries, where the goal was "not trial, but to keep them in custody, out of circulation, and without access to U.S. courts." ("Below the Radar" -- Amnesty International Report) Other goals of the program were to seize documents, computers and any other information that could be exploited for intelligence (Garcia, 5). George J. Tenet, the former director of CIA, has testified that there were 70 cases before the Sept. 11 attacks, duly authorized by the White House, in which prisoners were transferred from one country to another, without formal extradition proceedings (Jehl and Johnston).

After 9/11, the Bush administration has considerably expanded the scope of the rendition program and what was once an inter-agency operation became largely a CIA operation, i.e., the Americans started to use CIA officials for interrogation of the rendered suspects, instead of leaving the job to foreign interrogators only. This was made possible after the signing of a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (Ibid.)

The U.S. View Point on Extraordinary Rendition

The crux of the U.S. argument in support of extraordinary rendition is that the current breed of international terrorists has no compunction about targeting innocent civilians and damaging U.S. interests in any which way they can; therefore, 'niceties' of warfare such as the Geneva Convention for humane treatment of prisoners of war and the UN Convention against Torture does not apply to terrorists. Moreover, the U.S. administration believes that important intelligence about terrorist plots have been (or can be) gathered by employing 'unconventional' interrogation techniques on rendered terror suspects. It is also argued by supporters of 'extraordinary rendition' that the American lives saved due to gathering of such intelligence justify the means to the end.

Due to the secret nature of the extraordinary rendition program and its implication on international law, however, the U.S. administration officials are reluctant to talk about it on record and have been ambivalent about its existence. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, for example, while admitting the existence of renditions, claims that renditions do not lead to a risk of torture. She insists that: "the United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured." (Quoted in "Below the Radar" -- Amnesty International Report) Rice tries to deflect criticism of extraordinary rendition by suggesting that "[f]or decades, the United States and other countries have used 'renditions' to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to their home country or to other countries where they can be questioned, held, or brought to justice" (Quoted by Fisher, 7). This statement of Rice conveniently forgets to mention that the 'renditions' she is referring to were 'extraditions' made under legal treaties rather than "extraordinary" renditions. President Bush, too, in an interview with "The Times" on January 27, 2005 assured the world that "torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture." (Quoted by Mayer) Statements of other U.S. officials and the overwhelming evidence that has been uncovered since 9/11, however, point to the contrary. Just a few days after the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice-President Dick Cheney, arguing on the television program "Meet the Press," that the government needed to "work through, sort of, the dark side..." And "...it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective." (Ibid.) the Abu Gharib prison scandal has further revealed that the CIA and U.S. Special forces have no compunction about using torture on enemy combatants.

In off-the-record conversation, U.S. officials and supporters of rendition are much more forthcoming about the 'usefulness' of the rendition program. In fact, they privately bristle at the lax European Union (EU) asylum policies and restrictions in the Convention against Torture against extraditing suspected terrorists back to their country of origin. They point out that if a suspected terrorist gets on a plane and gets off at a place like Copenhagen or Toronto and demands asylum, even if he is not granted asylum, he's pretty much got a safe haven to operate in because he can' be deported or extradited back to where ever he came from. They believe that such lenient 'European' laws create a huge gap in security, which need to be tightened and that human rights conventions such as the Convention Against Torture make it almost impossible for states to gain a reasonable and necessary degree of assurance against devastating attacks in an age of asymmetrical warfare against international terrorists.

Former U.S. officials such as Michael Scheuer, who helped to set up the CIA's rendition program during the Clinton administration, are more forthcoming about commenting on the nature and existence of 'extraordinary' renditions. Scheuer has in different statements and interviews to the media admitted that officials who authorized renditions were well aware that prisoners sent to countries such as Egypt would most likely be tortured (Grey 27 -- "Torture's Tipping Point"). He has further clarified that renditions were authorized by the U.S. National Security Council during the Clinton administration and officials in Congress, and "all of them understood what it meant to send suspects to those countries" (Pelley).

Other U.S. government officials admit that the extraordinary rendition program became much more potent after the 9/11 attacks on Trade Towers and Pentagon. Cofer Black, Director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Centre from 1999 until May 2002, in a statement before the 9/11 Commission has testified: "...After 9/11 the gloves come off... 'No Limits' aggressive, relentless, worldwide pursuit of any terrorist who threatens us is the only way to go..." (Quoted in "Below the Radar" -- Amnesty International Report). Another American intelligence agent quoted in the December 26, 2002, Washington Post says: "We don't kick the ***** out of them [terrorist suspects]. We send them to other countries so they can kick the ***** out of them." (Quoted by Gutierrez, 13)

The 'Down Side' of Extraordinary Rendition

Research by investigative journalists, eye witness accounts, and testimony by victims of rendition who have later been released have given us a fairly detailed picture of how a 'typical' extraordinary rendition operation is carried out. It starts with a sudden attack by half-dozen or so hooded security officials on a 'terror suspect' in an airport lobby, busy-street or an apartment building; after physically overwhelming the suspect, he is promptly drugged and sedated by a suppository forced up their rectum, handcuffed, mouth duct-taped, and their clothes cut off their bodies with scissors. The "detainee" is then swaddled in diapers, dressed in orange jumpsuits, blindfolded, placed in handcuffs and leg irons, and dumped into a special CIA jet, to be flown off to an undisclosed secret location. Once transported to a country such as Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Jordan, the suspect is subjected to brutal interrogation, beatings and torture, without any judicial oversight.

Mistakes are Common

Any 'program' that violates a basic tenet of a fair justice system, i.e., assumption of innocence before being proven guilty, is bound to be prone to mistakes whereby the innocent are victimized along with the guilty. When a process is carried out in secrecy and without any judicial oversight, the chances of such mistakes are multiplied.

It is no surprise, therefore, to find a number of mistakes made in the process of extraordinary rendition due to victims being selected on basis of faulty intelligence, the flimsiest of suspicions, or even mistaken identity. One such well-documented case is that of Khaled el-Masri, a 43-year-old German of Lebanese origin who was unlawfully detained on December 31, 2003 while on a trip to Macedonia. After his arrest and interrogation for 23 days by the Macedonian intelligence agencies, during which he was denied access to the German embassy or any other person, Masri was handed over to U.S. officials, presumably CIA agents. According to el-Masri's testimony given after his release, the hooded CIA agents subjected him to the full extraordinary rendition SOP: such as cutting off his clothes with scissors; drugging him via his anus; putting him in diapers, tracksuit, and a hood; and shackling him to the floor of a waiting aircraft. The plane flew him to the "Salt Pit" -- an abandoned brick factory in Kabul, which was run by U.S. agents as a prison. Masri says that he was detained for five months in a dark cell, beaten, half-starved, and interrogated repeatedly by U.S. agents; he went on hunger strike to protest against his treatment, and was force fed ("The Rendition of Khaled-el-Masri").

In May 2004, five months after his detention, el-Masri was released after the Americans realized that he had been mistakenly identified as a terrorist because an al-Qaeda terrorist had a similar name. The manner of his release (he was blindfolded and handcuffed and let out on a lonely road in Albania) and the subsequent treatment of his lawsuit by the U.S. courts (dismissal on the basis of national security) have received widespread condemnation from human right organizations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) helped el-Masri to file lawsuit in a U.S. court against his illegal detention in December 2005; it was dismissed by a Federal Court on May 12, 2006 claiming the trial could jeopardize national security. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up his appeal for hearing on October 9, 2007, without comment ("Supreme Disgrace" -- NYT Editorial, October 11, 2007).

Another prominent case of an innocent victim of 'rendition' is that of Maher Arar -- a Canadian citizen of Middle Eastern descent. He was seized at JFK airport in New York in 2002 and sent to Syria, where he was not only tortured but held for 10 months in a cell barely larger than a coffin. After his release, he would be cleared of any terrorist connections by an official Canadian inquiry (Grey, 26 -- "Torture's Tipping Point").

Ceding the High Moral Ground

The primary moral argument against the type of terrorism practiced by Al-Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations is their blatant disregard for the rules of warfare and their indescriminate targetting of civilian non-combatants. Brutal torture and beheading of prisoners by terrorists are condemned by even those who may otherwise sympathize with their 'cause.' By resorting to 'extraordinary rendition' of suspects, which is primarily done in order to subject the suspects to torture and brutal interrogation, the United States risks losing the high moral ground in its War Against Terror. For example, Uzbekistan, one of the destinations for rendered suspects, is known for boiling prisoners alive, and Syria -- another favorite destination for suspects apprehended by CIA, is infamous for using a device called "German chair" which is designed to twist a victim's spine (Grey -- "Our Dirty Little Torture Secret"). The rendition program that hands over people, who have not even been proven guilty yet, to such sadistic practices is a definite source of lowering America's image in the world as a benign superpower that fights on the side of justice and freedom. In a way, therefore, the U.S. policy extraordinary renditions serve to strengthen the hands of its enemies who seek to portray it as an aggressive bully and an unjust superpower without morals.

Dubious Intelligence-Gathering through Torture

Despite claims by the intelligence agencies that the information gathered from 'rendered' terror suspects helps to avert terrorist attacks and saves American lives, it is doubtful whether information gathered through torture can be relied upon. People subjected to torture often tell their tormentors what they want to hear. Consider the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Libyan Al-Qaeda training camp commander who was captured in Pakistan after the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces and collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001. He was rendered by the CIA to Egypt for interrogation where he was subjected to beatings with thick metal rods, electrocution of his genitals, and other torture. Libi told his interrogators what they wanted to hear, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship with al-Qaeda and Iraq had supplied chemical weapons and training to al-Qaeda. This coerced and false information was conveyed to the United States by the Egyptians, and was used by the U.S. administration to justify the invasion of Iraq. Hence, it is evident that information gathered through torture cannot be considered reliable, and can sometimes even lead to very serious consequences (Grey -- "Missing Presumed Tortured").

Effect on International Law

Extraordinary renditions are clearly violative of a number of international laws of which the United States is a signatory. The most significant among them is the "UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" (CAT) that was adopted for ratification by a General Assembly resolution on December 10, 1984 and came into force on June 26, 1987. Article 3.1 of the Convention states "No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." ("Convention Against...") of course, the U.S. officials, including President Bush and the Secretary of State, Ms. Rice have always denied that the United States "knowingly" sends people to other countries for torture. But such denials do not stand the test of credibility in the presence of other evidence, statements by U.S. officials such as Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney that seem to suggest otherwise, and the simple logic: If no torture is practiced in countries such as Syria, Egypt, Uzbekistan, where terror suspects are usually rendered, why bother to send them there?

More explicit statements by former CIA officials indicate that the U.S. rendition program is clearly violative of Article 3.1 of CAT. Vincent Cannistraro, a former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, in a 2003 interview to "Newsday" narrates that a senior al-Qa'ida detainee, who was not cooperating with his interrogators, was sent from Guantanamo Bay to Egypt. "they promptly tore his fingernails out and he started telling things." (Quoted in "Below the Radar") Another former CIA official told the BBC in January 2006: "The way you get around involving Americans in torture is to get someone else to do it." (Ibid.)