[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.




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