Torture/Renditions, USA : Various

Prosecution of US leaders who've condoned torture and related:

First, Jail all Bush's Lawyers (A recommendation for Holder)
By Robert Parry (who first broke the story of the Iran-Contra Affair):
here

For actions US & World citizens can take:
here

Center for Constitutional Rights questions Eric Holder's evident decision not to prosecute those in the former US leadership who condoned torture
here
and
here

John Yoo
Since many who may also be following the torture & rendition items know well the name, John Yoo, here's something on him: Robert Gannon, a reporter who has been covering Professor John Yoo at UC Berkeley for the East Bay Express, writes in John Yoo, War Criminal? "The chances that the notorious UC Berkeley law professor will be investigated for war crimes appear to have increased in recent weeks." More at here

Some of the recent items on this topic may be only questions and conjecture. Yet certainly it's in our best interest and the interest of human rights to follow these.

Here are some of my usual reads - sites which feature ONGOING work related to Torture and Detainees:

GTMO detainees and related
here

Reprieve British - with US interaction - work also involves the death penalty...
here

Cageprisoners British-based - from a more or less Muslim and/or Arabic perspective...excellent, usually calm reporting - A must for all interested in the whole problem of torture and US detainees...
here

US -- Bill of Rights Defense Committee Articles related to US Bill of Rights & Constitution or the lack thereof in recent US operations/policy - often in regards to torture
here

Center for Constitutional Rights US This group works with many of the GTMO lawyers
here

Of course, do keep watching Human Rights groups in general on torture & Renditions: Amnesty I and AmnestyUSA, International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch and many others...
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Last week there was some buzz among rights & anti-war folk who highlighted the Center for Constitutional Rights' recent press releases. These items questioned President Barack Obama's January 22 orders on interrogation and closing Guantanamo. CCR cautioned that while the new US administration in no uncertain terms stated the CIA must close its secret black hole prisons - they may have left a loophole for the CIA to resume them.

A secret or extraordinary rendition refers to the practice of the CIA whereby it kidnaps suspects and flies them to a country where they are held in secret prisons and interrogated by non U.S. personnel. The International Red Cross has no access to them. No lists are made available as to who or how many people are victims of the practice. Some of the countries these suspects are shipped to practice torture.

The ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights and other human rights groups have been campaigning for several years to stop secret renditions. So do many other rights experts and groups. Secret renditions must stop. Now there's a question over whether Obama fully ordered it stopped or not.

See The Timesonline last few days...
here

Under executive orders signed on January 22, the CIA appears to have preserved its authority to carry out renditions – by which hundreds of terrorist suspects have been abducted and transferred to prisons in countries with questionable human rights records such as Egypt, Morocco or Jordan.

The measure, disclosed by the Los Angeles Times yesterday, gives some indication of how Mr Obama’s promise of change may be slower to be realised than once hoped, with the new Administration coming under concerted attack across a range of issues.

But, there may be a problem with the LA Times article.

Glenn Greenwald says the LA Times story about this order may be overblown. Hilzoy agrees. And Scott Horton says the LA Times got "punked".

...From The New York Times:

The country that receives the prisoners gives phony assurances to Washington that they will be well-treated, which allows the Central Intelligence Agency to claim, as they did in this case, that it “does not transport individuals anywhere for the purpose of torture.” Right, and waterboarding is not torture either.

Some may want to go to the 2007 European Union report on Secret Renditions. Apparently, the CIA operated more than 1,200 flights through European airspace. Not all were secret renditions of prisoners or suspects, but at least 21 cases of such are mentioned in the report. The report criticized European countries for turning a blind eye to the CIA's actions.
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Secret rendition is a big deal. What about Khaled el-Masri. Why should the CIA be allowed to grab people off the street and flying them on chartered planes to secret prisons outside the legal jurisdiction of the U.S. and Red Cross? And what about this practice of flying them to countries that may not comply with the Geneva conventions against torture?

Should not the U.S. must have one policy: We do not torture. Doesn't this mean we cannot be complicit in torture? If we flew them there, isn't this then in our name?

So does Obama's order give the CIA the option to re-institute secret rendition or not? Let's be glad that the CCR and ACLU, which have represented many tortured detainees and sued over the Ghost Air flights are staying on the case!

Human Rights Watch: (This may be an overly paraphrased summary of their temporary conclusion) The order does not address the legality of what is known as rendition to torture - the practice of illegally transferring a person to a country where he or she faces torture or persecution - and instead leaves review of that practice to the task force as well.

The best known case over time has been that of Maher Arar, a dual Canadian-Syrian citizen arrested at New York's John F. Kennedy airport in September 2002, flown to Jordan, and then driven across the border to Syria, where he was detained in a tiny cell for almost a year and tortured repeatedly.

Obama repeatedly condemned the practice of rendition to torture on the campaign trail, and they have urged him to put an end to this illegal practice as well.

Yes, United States policy will be different from what it's been under Dick "waterboarding -- it's a no brainer" Cheney. The generals are telling President Obama that the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo has not just damaged the US reputation, but contributed to US losses in Iraq. Worldwide public opinion -- and protests here in the US that affected US public opinion -- turned against Bush. Obama, as the new commander in chief of a largely disgraced military, wants to distance his administration from the policies associated with Bush.

As many have pointed out, torture was not invented by the Bush White House. Tens of thousands of us protested over the last 20 years at the School of the Americas precisely because the U.S. has been "out-sourcing" torture for many years, and training others to perform it. We, the citizens of the US and various Rights experts and activists must take a large share of the responsibility for what happens under this new administration in regards to torture. (Items & questions here are - in part - paraphrased from The World Can't Wait.)

The following cover some essential points in Obama's statements - and what these reporters/activists surmise that the US will now do:

Jill McLaughlin, in No I Can't: A Dissident to U.S. Empire But A Fighter For Humanity here writes, "According to Allan Nairn, the executive order that Obama signed only covers those detained by any officer, employee, and agent of the U.S. in facilities operated or owned by the U.S. in an armed conflict. This leaves room for the U.S. interrogator to do as he/she pleases in places not in armed conflict as Nairn points out. Nairn also points out the U.S. history of torture by proxy. When one thinks of Abu Ghraib now reopened and under control of the Iraqi security forces one can only think of all kinds of torture by proxy taking place there. Then there is also the prison outside of Kabul, Afghanistan called Pul-i-charki which expanded in 2006 and is run by U.S. allies in Afghanistan. There is little known about this prison since the detainees there are denied legal counsel, and the International Red Cross has been denied access there.. There are also possible loopholes in this ban on torture. Obama may decide to employ some interrogation techniques not outlined in the Army Field Manual."

Ken Theisen, Closing Gitmo is not Enough! We Need to Hold Those Responsible for the War of Terror Accountable!here "As Obama becomes the Commander in Chief, he will take over the war of terror and its vast prison gulag. While he will close Gitmo eventually, he will still maintain the prisons run around the world by the Department of War. We need to hold him not only accountable for the detainees in Gitmo, but the thousands of others held by the Pentagon and its allies. We also need to demand that thousands be released; that they be compensated for their abuse; and that those responsible for the U.S. war of terror be prosecuted. But this will not happen if left to Obama, the Congress, or the courts. Only a mass movement of the people will force real accountability. Anything less will allow the Bush regime policies in the war of terror to continue under a younger and smoother talking Commander-in-Chief.

Jeremy Miller, Obama Lets CIA Keep Controversial Renditions Tool, here in the Chicago Tribune today, writes, "Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism-aside from Predator missile strikes-for taking suspected terrorists off the street. The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured. The European Parliament condemned renditions as an "illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights. But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard."

Attorney Candace Gorman (featured toward end of -The Torture Team- by Philippe Sands) writes about her client Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, who is still locked up in the "hell hole we call Guantanamo" in Flower Power.here more "Last week I received an email from the 'privilege team,' the ones that read our attorney/client mail. The email informed me that Al-Ghizzawi sent me a picture and on the back of the picture, there was a note stating that the picture was his gift to me. The privilege team decided that the note was 'personal' and that Al-Ghizzawi violated the rules in sending the picture through the legal mail. They informed me that I would have to send the picture back to him (through the legal mail) and tell Al-Ghizzawi to resend it to me through the 'non-legal mail.' (Really, I cannot make this shit up)." It turned out that Mr. Al-Ghizzawi sent her a photo of flowers, and she refused to return it to him and make him re-send it.

And Robert Gannon, a reporter who has been covering Professor John Yoo at UC Berkeley for the East Bay Express, writes in John Yoo, War Criminal? "The chances that the notorious UC Berkeley law professor will be investigated for war crimes appear to have increased in recent weeks." More at here

The common question keeps coming up: Should all those associated with the Bush torture policies be indicted for war crimes, and prosecuted? Many think so...yet, would this tie up the US citizenry and legal experts so that the actual restoration of the rule of law, constitutional precepts and even follow-through on human rights such as closing GTMO and stopping Rendition program by CIA not be stopped?