Features » February 4, 2008

Extraordinary Rendition on Trial (cont’d)

At the end of the day, the case is about sending a clear message to U.S. companies that they will be held accountable for profiting from human rights violations.

Flight records show that Bisher Al-Rawi was flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where intelligence reports confirm that the United States detained him at a secret CIA facility known as the “Dark Prison,” and later at Bagram Air Base.

In a sworn affidavit, Al-Rawi describes what happened to him upon his arrival:

From the outset I was held in complete darkness and isolation and kept in leg shackles 24 hours a day. I was given very little water and fed only once every one or two days. Despite the extreme cold, I was not provided with adequate clothing or blankets. Strange music and loud man-made sounds were played around the clock, which in addition to the screams of other prisoners around me, made sleeping extremely difficult.

He says things got worse after U.S. officials transferred him to Bagram. “I was kicked and dragged along the floor … held in a squalid cell [for two months] and forced to undergo prolonged periods of isolation and sleep depravation,” he testified. “I was threatened with death or transfer to another country to be tortured.”

Al-Rawi was finally transferred to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo on Feb. 7, 2003, where he would spend the next four years without being charged. He was released on March 30, 2007, and was flown on a luxury Lear Jet back to the United Kingdom, where he currently resides. He has received neither an apology nor an explanation for his ordeal.

Breaking the Code

Connecting Jeppesen Dataplan to the rendition flights was nothing short of a journalistic grand slam.

In 2005, Italian investigative reporter Claudio Gatti “broke the Jeppesen code” when he managed to trace the company’s unique originator identification number to specific rendition planes using public flight databases.

Then in 2006, journalist Stephen Grey further exposed the nuts and bolts of the program with his book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, in which he documents the cases of nearly 90 people who were rendered by the CIA.

Between the work of the two journalists and that of the U.N. Committee on Torture and governmental agencies throughout Europe, there’s little about extraordinary rendition that hasn’t been exposed.

What is clear is that the activities that constitute the program are illegal under universally accepted international standards and conventions.

Among them, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 47/133, ratified in 1992, expressly prohibits “enforced disappearances,” and spells out that such operations “render their perpetrators and the state or state authorities which organize, acquiesce in or tolerate such disappearances liable under civil law.”

The Jeppesen plaintiffs are seeking compensation of no less than $75,000 each and unspecified punitive damages.

But the ACLU’s Wizner says at the end of the day, the case is about sending a clear message to U.S. companies that they will be held accountable for profiting from human rights violations.

“More and more of our military and security services are turning to private contractors and it might very well be difficult for them to carry out these operations without these contractors,” Wizner says. “If some of those private contractors look at the Jeppesen case and think twice before taking the CIA’s money to participate in these illegal and immoral operations, then we will have succeeded.”

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• Reader Comments

  As always, ITT publishes stuff and leaves out the most interesting parts.

  Al-Rawi has been accused of association with al-Qa’eda, aiding terrorists in moving between Britain and Pakistan, concealing terrorists in Britain, and moving funds in support of al-Qa’eda operations.  Al-Rawi’s return to Britain followed an extradition request by Britain, where he was wanted on terrorist charges, and which followed negotiations between Britain and the USA to assure that adequate security safeguards were in place for al-Rawi in Britain. 

  These charges against al-Rawi are somewhat more serious than having a “suspicious” “common store-bought battery charger” in his luggage.  My horseback estimate is that the charger was a pretense to hold al-Rawi for a few days to verify information or prepare to track him further. 

  ITT seems always to support the people who want to kill us.  In that effort, ITT is in bad company: ACLU, MoveOn , NYT, Reid, Pelosi, and the HillBillys, to name a few. 

  Well, so what?  Does anyone besides the Sinisteres care if a terrorist undergoes rendition, waterboarding, confinement, intensive questioning?  Not me.  I expect my government to protect me from people who want to kill me (terrorists) or enslave me (Sinisteres).  As regarding the domestic Sinisteres, we have the right and ability to defend ourselves, and we will do so as necessary.

  Posted by scorp on Feb 4, 2008 at 9:31 PM

  scorp mouths the lies that the tyrants create to control. That is the reason for the lies, to give the mealy something to chew on, to give the sheep something to browse. What kind of coward sells out anyone and, seemingly, would sell out everyone just because he is yellowed by the fearing lies of those who only seek to control him? 

  Considering scorp’s rote comments the back of a horse is an apt description.

  Posted by braamer on Feb 5, 2008 at 2:12 AM

  What is the really frightening aspect of the whole matter is that the government can literally get away with murder and torture simply by claiming that any action brought in court against it by the victim would “present a grave risk of injury to national security”.
  So if you are the unfortunate innocent victim, what is your recourse against the perpetrators?
  Join Al’Quaeda? (for government hacks: this is meant ironically)
  The arrogance and stupidity of our executive is mindboggling. They are supposed to be our servants and Amrica is supposed to be a nation of laws, not of men. We better get back to that attitude in a hurry, before we p..s off the rest of the world.

  Posted by dlibori on Feb 5, 2008 at 9:44 PM

  Hats off to Sean Belcher, the tech writer who walked away from his job with the aforementioned Boeing subsidiary rather involve himself in what he perceived to be nefarious undertakings at variance with our nation’s precepts of accountability under the law.  As ACLU agents lilke Ben Wizner and those of us who depend on the ACLU to reveal our government’s egregious excesses and insufferable license have come to know since the Church Committee hearings three decades ago, black-box clandestine operations are sometimes revolting. So deep is the depth of CIA insertion into our nation’s commercial life, that it is not a stretch to wonder whether recipients of such funding delude themselves into thinking that they rake it in as a matter of “patriotism.” The company spokesperson, Mike Pound, seems the straight man for this dark comedy.

  Posted by Bud Wizer on Feb 6, 2008 at 11:12 PM

  “the victim would “present a grave risk of injury to national security”.

  One wonders what should happen if the “victim” does present a grave risk to national security (e.g., the waterboarding “victims’).

  “So if you are the unfortunate innocent victim, what is your recourse against the perpetrators?”

  One might wonder if there are any “innocent victims”. I somehow feel little empathy for September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. They got less than they deserve and are lucky we are NOT like them!

  Posted by wolf on Feb 8, 2008 at 8:57 PM

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