The Costs of Extraordinary Rendition

Paper Summary:

This paper presents a discussion of the legal implications of extraordinary renditions and examines the practice within an historical and legal context. Specifically, the paper explores what arguments are used to support the practice, and how its continued use threatens the very fabric of legal democracy and rule of law in the United States and in the world. The paper contends that examining these issues is the most important first step we can take regarding extraordinary renditions; permitting the continued abuse and torture of individuals who have been convicted of no crime is entirely unacceptable.

Outline:
Introduction
Historical Context of United States Renditions
9/11 and Intensification of Renditions
Legal Implications of Extraordinary Renditions
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"In order to secretly populate these CIA prisons--or black sites--with sus-pected terrorists, the Bush Administration employed a process known as ex-traordinary rendition. Extraordinary rendition amounts to kidnapping foreign na-tionals and delivering them into facilities under the jurisdiction of a third party (Weaver and Pallitto, 2006). It has been demonstrated that suspects transferred in such a fashion are quite often tortured for information and treated in ways that violate basic human rights, international treaties, and UNITED STATES law. Conveniently for the UNITED STATES government, suspects are sent to nations such as Syria or Egypt where torture is common practice. In fact, it would seem that the only nations to which the United States routinely transfers suspects through extraordinary renditions are those nations that have terrible human rights records. It may well be that the UNITED STATES government has not specific intention of using torture against these suspects, but it should be readily apparent that they are more than willing to reserve the capacity to use torture if the need should arise. If the situation were otherwise, then we should expect any suspect captured to be openly and legally transferred to UNITED STATES detention facilities where their treatment and interrogations could be controlled and monitored under UNITED STATES law."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Elsea, J.K. and Kim, J. (2007, January 23). Undisclosed UNITED STATES de-tention sites overseas: background and legal issues. CRS Report for Congress. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved November 29, 2007, from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL33643.pdf
• Grey, S. (2005, December 19). Torture's tipping point. New Statesman, pp. 24-25.
• Grey, S. (2006, November 20). Missing presumed tortured. New Statesman, pp. 12-15.
• Gutierrez, D. (2006, January-February). The extraordinary cruelty of "extraordinary rendition." The Humanist, pp. 11-15.
• Hodgson, G. (2005/06, Winter). The UNITED STATES-European torture dispute: an autopsy. World Policy Journal, pp. 7-14.

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