[Ppnews] Obama and Rendition
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jun 24 13:25:48 EDT 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/gimble06242011.html
June 24 - 26, 2011
Killing More and Imprisoning Less
Obama and Rendition
By V. NOAH GIMBLE
The day after Barack Obama took office, he signed
a series of executive orders mandating the
closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as
well as the global network of secret, CIA-run
"black site" prisons. In addition, he committed
the United States to observe the Geneva
Conventions and the Convention Against Torture.
The Bush administration had exempted U.S.
interrogators from these two treaties, arguing
that the Global War on Terror presented
unprecedented intelligence-gathering challenges
that had to be overcome by all means necessary.
Obama's stated commitment to ban torture also
extended to the outsourcing of interrogations to
countries where torture could be employed without
the legal barriers that exist within the U.S.
military and civilian justice systems. He vowed
to end the "extraordinary rendition" program
whereby terror suspects were disappeared by U.S.
agents, transferred into the custody of
third-party intelligence services and tortured by
foreign agents asking questions provided by the
CIA. The European Parliament estimated that the
CIA flew at least 1,245 rendition flights between
2001 and 2007, but all information on those
flights, including who the passengers were and
how many people were abducted, remains shrouded
in secrecy. Such a policy contrasts with
"rendition to justice," a transfer that takes
place at least nominally within the legal system.
This kind of rendition requires that the detainee
be arraigned and tried in court on arrival in the
United States without having been tortured during the capturing process.
More than two years later, the Obama
administration has not followed through on most
of these promises, even reversing several
commitments. For one, the administration
confirmed that Guantanamo not only remains open,
but that it will even take in new "high-value"
detainees in the event of their capture.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, at least 20 secret
prisons are still actively torturing "short-term
transfer" detainees. The only change Obama has
brought to these classified prisons is granting
access to the facilities by the International
Committee of the Red Cross (their reports, issued
to the executive branch of the detaining power,
are seldom released to the public or even to
Congress). Instead of operating directly under
CIA control, they are run by the Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC). Nevertheless, CIA
personnel still participate in the interrogations
held within their anonymous concrete walls.
This evidence alone is enough to raise serious
questions about the Obama administration's
willingness and ability to reverse the Bush era's
use of kidnapping, extrajudicial detention and
torture in the fight against terrorism. Granted,
the administration has faced vocal and vehement
opposition from congressional Republicans on many
issues, including the closure of Guantanamo, and
it is no secret that the military and
intelligence services of the United States are
slow to accept changes, to say the least. But
Obama's political about-face raises questions
about the sincerity of the administration's
professed desire to wield American power in a
more principled manner that conforms to
international law. In order to find out more
about the current administration's re-branding of
the so-called war on terror, it is necessary to
delve deeper into what Dick Cheney famously
called the "dark side." The culture of secrecy
and impunity that has come to characterize the
executive branch, which the Obama administration
has continued to cultivate, poses a serious
threat to democracy, pitting the state's
definition of security against the security of individuals.
Torture and Rendition
Before becoming president, Obama was a professor
of constitutional law. Before that, he was
president of the Harvard Law Review. He knew that
the United States under Ronald Reagan had signed
the UN Convention Against Torture. He had read
the Geneva Conventions and knew the obligations
warring powers face regarding the treatment of detainees.
Because of this background, the president had to
know that the United States was violating
international law with its policy of
extraordinary rendition, more than ever under the
Bush administration. Under the Convention Against
Torture, a country may not knowingly pass a
detainee into the custody of a country where the
detainee will "more likely than not" face
torture. If there is any doubt about the
recipient country's record on torture, the
detaining country must receive assurance that the
detainee will not be tortured. According to human
rights attorney Scott Horton, the Bush
administration "turned [the Convention's
provisions] into a complete joke: people were
being turned over to countries where they would
be tortured, [constituting] a violation of both
domestic and international law."
The agents who turned detainees over to foreign
interrogators did obtain assurances from
recipient countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan,
Morocco, Poland, Macedonia, Kosovo, Romania,
Bulgaria, Ukraine, and even Libya, that detainees
would not be abused. But in practice, these
assurances were as empty and dishonest as George
W. Bush's repeated claims that the U.S.
"government does not torture people." One
rendition victim, Canadian-Syrian engineer Maher
Arar, was rendered to Syria and imprisoned there
for nearly a year where he was tortured
regularly. After he was freed and cleared of all
charges, the Canadian government lodged an
official complaint against the United States for
transferring a Canadian citizen into the custody
of a country with a record of torture. Arar filed
suit against former Attorney General John
Ashcroft only to have the case thrown out due to
the executive invocation of the "state secrets
privilege," claiming that evidentiary information
on the rendition program would endanger U.S. national security.
When the Obama administration came to power, it
could have disclosed evidence necessary to bring
justice for Maher Arar and other victims of the
federal government's rendition program. Instead
Attorney General Eric Holder followed his
predecessor's lead, blocking Arar's case all the
way to the Supreme Court. And indeed it wasn't
long into the new administration's term before
the continued practice of rendition came to light.
In April 2009, a 45-year old Lebanese businessman
named Raymond Azar went to Afghanistan on behalf
of his employer, Lebanese-based defense
contractor Sima Salazar Group. Previously, his
underling Dinorah Cobos had made arrangements to
give $100,000 to an FBI agent posing as a
contracts officer in order to secure contracts
for Sima. The FBI was thus luring the pair to
Afghanistan as part of a sting operation. In
Kabul, eight FBI agents seized the two
contractors, stripping Azar naked, subjecting him
to a cavity search and blindfolding and shackling
him. He was first transported to Bagram air base
in Afghanistan, and later taken to Virginia where
he was arrested and charged with fraud.
U.S. agents inside Afghanistan are only
authorized to detain and transfer suspects out of
the country if the suspect is deemed to pose an
imminent threat, which Azar most certainly did
not. Officials from the Departments of Justice
and State claim that they received the consent of
the Afghan government to conduct the rendition,
but Afghan officials deny having ever been informed of the operation.
Azar pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit
bribery, but his maximum five-year sentence was
reduced to only six months due to the abusive
treatment he received in U.S. custody. More than
anything, the rendition of Raymond Azar was an
embarrassment for the Obama administration.
According to Scott Horton, the unwanted
controversy surrounding the Azar will push the
administration to proceed with caution with the
kind of renditions that the Bush administration
pursued. "I can't find any evidence of
extraordinary renditions under Obama," Horton
told me, "but there's really no problem with normal extradition."
Rendition particularly extraordinary rendition
turned out to be a public relations nightmare
for the Bush administration, and despite the
media's lack of attention to the Azar case, it
doesn't seem to be gaining any fans during the
Obama administration either. Thus to avoid
negative publicity, the Obama administration has
pursued a different strategy toward suspected
terrorists (and whoever else happens to be in their vicinity): killing them.
Kill More, Imprison Less
Despite the rhetorical shift that Obama heralded,
and the promises made by executive order, the
president chose not to dismantle some of the most
legally questionable tactics that the Bush
administration employed in the conduct of the
so-called War on Terror. Perhaps most
importantly, Obama has maintained the
government's right to kill foreign nationals and
American citizens alike, anywhere in the world,
whom the president deems "a continuing and
imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,"
evidence of guilt and constitutional rights notwithstanding.
The government's claim was recently challenged on
behalf of one of the targets on the executive hit
list, Anwar al-Awlaki. The Yemeni-American Muslim
cleric has for some time been a celebrity
lecturer amongst extremists and has a large
online following. Allegedly, he inspired the Fort
Hood shooter, as well as the failed Times Square
and "underwear" bombers. His father, with the
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), filed a
lawsuit against the government arguing that he
did not pose an imminent threat. The judge threw
out the case at the request of the executive.
According to his lawyer, Maria Lahood, Judge John
Bates called the issue of extrajudicial targeted
killing "a political question which could not be
adjudicated by the court. It was essentially up
to the executive to decide if someone they'd
identified as a terrorist should be killed and
the court didn't have any place to review that."
The judge also denied that al-Awlaki's father had
legal standing to argue the case on behalf of his son.
More recently, the government and media alike
have revived the policy of targeted killing to
justify the murder of an unarmed Osama bin Laden
in Pakistan by U.S. Special Forces. But even bin
Laden's supposed guilt does not confer any legal
legitimacy on his assassination.
Where the use of Special Forces is deemed
impracticable, the CIA has a large fleet of
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles drones to rain down
Hellfire missiles on targeted suspects in various
countries by remote control from fortified
bases thousands of miles away. Indeed, just days
after bin Laden's death, a drone strike targeting
al-Awlaki missed its mark, killing two bystanders instead.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times last month,
the Obama administration has killed more alleged
terrorists than it has imprisoned. Indeed, the
Obama administration launched more drone strikes
in two years than the Bush administration did
during its entire eight years. In 2010 Agence
France Presse reported a total of more than 100
drone strikes that killed over 670 people. With a
rate of civilian casualties estimated to be as
high as 90 percent, drone strikes have fueled
anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Africa: Exporting Torture
The practice of extraordinary rendition has not
disappeared completely. When the practice of
kidnapping people and sending them to unknown
locations to be tortured struck a sour note with
the American voting public, the White House
stepped away from the policy. But, like lead
paint, DDT and asbestos, domestic regulations
haven't stopped the export of extraordinary rendition to poorer countries.
Washington has been fighting the war on terror in
East Africa since the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings
and it believes a significant network of al-Qaeda
militants have been in league with local jihadist
groups. The CIA presence in the region has
ballooned, and much-needed humanitarian aid
became linked to military cooperation with the
Pentagon. And U.S. allies practiced what
Washington preached in terms of fighting terrorism.
In 2007, U.S.-backed Kenyan security forces
abducted more than 150 men, women, and children,
mostly Somali Muslims, near the border between
Somalia and Kenya. Racial profiling such as this
has become all too common under regimes that
oppress ethnic minorities to maintain power, and
it has received the seal of approval from the
United States and its allies under the auspices of counter-terrorism.
The arbitrariness of the 2007 mass arrests is
evident. Only one detainee was charged in Kenya,
and the rest were either deported back to their
home countries or illegally rendered to Ethiopia
via Somalia. Ethiopian forces subjected detainees
to numerous human rights abuses, torturing
several of them. FBI and British agents also
interrogated the suspects, looking for terrorist
connections, but just one more detainee was
charged in Ethiopia, bringing the grand total to
two out of hundreds. About half of the rendition
victims were later released without charge,
dumped at the Somali border untreated for medical
issues resulting from torture. But some were held
for years with no access to lawyers or their
families disappeared indefinitely. Many have
been released thanks to the tireless efforts of
human rights advocates in Kenya, but 22 are not
accounted for according to the most recent Human
Rights Watch report on the issue.
Last year, Kenyan authorities rendered several
Kenyan Muslims to Uganda in connection with a
suicide bombing in Kampala. In Uganda, the
notorious Rapid Response Unit tortured the
suspects in between interrogations by U.S. and
British agents. One of the initial rendition
victims, Omar Awadh Omar, is a prominent Kenyan
human rights activist and an outspoken critic of
the clampdown of repression in East Africa.
Later, the U.S.-backed Ugandan dictatorship
targeted Al-Amin Kimanthi, the leader of Kenya's
Muslim Human Rights Forum and the loudest voice
in the East African struggle against illegal
rendition and torture. Even his colleague Clara
Gutteridge, a British human rights lawyer with
whom I communicated in researching this article,
was detained and deported from Kenya for
attempting to investigate matters further.
Increased U.S. military involvement in East
Africa and the export of extraordinary rendition
to that region have clear strategic motivations.
The U.S. military has long kept a major base in
Djibouti, where naval cruisers can monitor and
secure oil shipments through the Red Sea and the
Gulf of Aden. Moreover, the Horn of Africa is home to untapped oil reserves.
What's Next in the Search for Justice?
The Obama administration's approach to torture
and rendition has been challenged, though the
most meaningful dissenting voices come from
outside the country. The U.S. Congress has failed
to challenge the state secrets doctrine and the
concomitant executive impunity it implies, and
has actively sought to keep Guantanamo active.
Despite the efforts of Congresspersons like Ed
Markey (D-MA) to ban renditions, the legislative
branch is not likely to effectively challenge the
Obama administration. The Judiciary has similarly
recused itself from checking the executive. Last
month, in rejecting a case brought by five
innocent torture victims against the CIA
contractor that flew them to black-site prisons,
the Supreme Court upheld an appeals court ruling
affirming the president's right to kill any case
he pleased if he felt that evidence would reveal state secrets.
However, in Britain, Germany, Poland, Spain,
Italy, and Australia, investigations into the
global kidnapping ring known as extraordinary
rendition have been set in motion. The Italian
case is perhaps the most notable, as Italian
prosecutors were able to overcome intense
pressure from both the U.S. and Italian
governments in their pursuit of 26 conspirators
involved in the kidnapping of Muslim cleric Abu
Omar in Milan, who was tortured by the notorious
Egyptian Mukhabarat. The Italian case blew the
covers of 21 CIA agents, who were each sentenced
in absentia to five years in prison. Robert Lady,
the former CIA station chief in Milan, received
an eight-year prison sentence. Although the judge
granted diplomatic immunity to other defendants,
including the ringleader of the operation, Rome
station chief Jeff Castelli, prosecutors plan to
challenge the merits of the designation.
Meanwhile, the United States has refused to
cooperate with the prosecutors of the case, and
the Italian government, under U.S. pressure, is
not seeking to extradite those convicted. But the
European Union issued arrest warrants for the
conspirators, which translates into an effective travel ban to Europe.
Elsewhere, as documented by WikiLeaks, the U.S.
diplomatic corps under both the Bush and Obama
administrations has worked hard to kill foreign
investigations into CIA renditions. In Germany,
U.S. arm-twisting succeeded in stifling the
prosecution of 13 CIA agents involved in the
rendition of German citizen Khaled al-Masri from
Macedonia to Afghanistan, where he was tortured.
In Spain, U.S. diplomats threatened Spanish
politicians and political appointees with Uncle
Sam's cold shoulder if they failed to prevent
prosecutors from investigating allegations of
illegal rendition and torture of Spanish
citizens, but those cases remain open. Even the
family of drone victims in Pakistan have filed
suit against the United States for the wrongful
deaths of two loved ones. The odds of success may
seem nil, but the desire for justice is enormous.
The WikiLeaks revelations may empower foreign
governments and judiciaries, with broad popular
support, to continue to challenge Washington on
its illicit record of kidnapping and torturing
foreign nationals. But the United States won't
give up the fight easily, whether the continued
expansion of the renditions program in the Horn
of Africa or the heavy-handed meddling in European jurisprudence.
V. Noah Gimbel is a contributor to
<http://www.fpif.org/>Foreign Policy In Focus.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20110624/67dbd1a9/attachment.htm>
More information about the PPnews
mailing list