Still in the Rendition Business?
Observers in the UK have reported a liaison between a known rendition flight plane and British SAS helicopters.
A U.S. plane that featured in a European Parliament report into the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of terror suspects was met by two SAS helicopters in a secret operation at one of Britain’s biggest airports.
The Gulfstream jet landed at Birmingham International Airport on Friday, October 2, having flown in from an undisclosed location, and was seen by a member of staff being met minutes later by the Special Forces regiment aircraft.
Records show that the jet is owned by a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, a multi-billion-dollar defence corporation based in New York, whose clients include several American government departments, among them the Department of Homeland Security.
[snip]
The Birmingham airport employee who saw it land said helicopters that he recognised as belonging to the SAS’s support flight, 8 Flight Army Air Corps, based at Credenhill, near Hereford, arrived shortly afterwards.
The witness, who did not want to be named, added that he saw another plane, a Boeing 757 operated by COMCO, land at the airport on October 1, and that this was also met by two SAS helicopters. He said: ‘People were seen transferring between all the aircraft.’
The aircraft’s presence at Birmingham airport was also confirmed by Ron Kosys, a member of the Birmingham Aviation Enthusiasts Group, who has posted pictures on the group’s website.
The planes were parked in an area mostly used by private aircraft and situated away from the main runways.
[snip]
A Ministry of Defence source confirmed that SAS helicopters did meet the two aircraft at Birmingham airport but said their presence could be explained by an organised meeting to discuss ‘routine business between two allies’. He denied it had anything to do with rendition.
Though maybe it isn’t a rendition. As Tim Shorrock pointed out via Twitter this morning, L-3 Communications “also holds $2.4b contract for Spec Ops (assassination) Command.” So maybe we’re still in some other nasty business, along with the Brits.
Dare I say that no close cooperation between US government or mercenary troops and Britain’s SAS is routine or harmless. Those resources may be necessary and, when used with restraint, productive; their use is never harmless or routine.
Kind of ironic that we are now in the alien abduction business. It would seem to be in our blood.
Minor typo – should be “maybe”?
To “be” or not to “be,” that is the …
Um. Thanks.
I’m sorry, the US government does not recognize rendition, at least it does not as an act that could be actionable:
Bricklefritz. This won’t stop here, though.
So where does that leave Arar now, with his name apparently still on all those magical lists that the administration holds over the heads of Canadians too, not just Americans? Arar actually can fly within Canada because he finally fought back against the harrassment and he’s high-profile enough now to win, but all Canadians are vulnerable to being cut off by our own airlines for flights entirely within the country, just on Washington’s say-so.
No, doesn’t end here; but I don’t think the Supremes will reverse, probably won’t even take certiorari. This decision is based on sovereign immunity and that the US cannot be sued unless it specifically agrees to be sued. In regards to the conclusion that the US has not so specifically agreed on this nature of claim, I see little hope the Roberts Court will differ.
How would one find the decision and dissents? I don’t see links at the NYT.
(Isn’t it funny how the corporate media don’t exhibit the same good cybercitizenship that us DFHs take for granted in the blogosphere? I often wonder about that.)
Tsk, tsk. You’re such a cynic, bmaz!
I am too, BTW, and I agree 100%.
Will you be following the Supreme Court arguments in the Pottowatomie County, Iowa case on Wednesday? I’m expecting the Court will reverse the 8th Circuit’s decision reversing the District Court’s decision dismissing the plaintiff’s (an innocent defendant in a criminal case) 1983 suit against the prosecutor, who intentionally framed him, on the ground that the prosecutor is absolutely immune from suit, no matter how intentional or egregious the misconduct.
I hate the absolute immunity doctrine!
It is hard to get at a prosecutor unless he is state or local and he acted clearly outside his course and scope.
“Dismay” is the learned judge’s euphemism for outrage and alarm. Not allowing such cases to be heard is like an insurance company refusing to tell you why it’s rescinded your contract or denied you coverage for what an objective person would conclude is a covered claim.
Here’s where the “GWOT” issue comes back to bite. IF you are acting under the auspices of a “war” then you have to worry about Article 147 and the Geneva conventions – which make it a war crime to ship a protected person to another country after you take them into “internment”
Obama has said that, despite the fallout from the Italian Job, he plans on continuing “pseudo-rendition” of involving the US in kidnappings in foreign countries and then extra-judicially shipping the kidnap victims to other foreign countries to be *handled.* He hasn’t going into detail on whether he will continue to have the pseudo-rendition kidnap vitcims stripped, photographed naked, then anally assaulted with drugs and foreign objects. I guess he’s not a details guy.
In any event, I think you have three disparate things that the media all lumps together as “rendition.”
First is the old rendition, which was any non-judicial means (often voluntary hand offs by governments, but outside their court system) of the US obtaining custody of someone against whom a warrant or indictment issued by a US court was outstanding, to bring that person to that court for judicial processing in the US.
Second you have the US playing “Dog” and being a freebie bounty hunter, if there is such a thing. I guess if you really wanted, you could tag this as “extraordinary” rendition, but IMO that would still be misleading. This is where a foreign country has it’s own judicial process outstanding against one of its citizens, but isn’t trying to hard to track them down or bring them to justice in that country. The US goes out and hunts down the person, kidnaps them from the third party country, and ships them off to the country where the warrant is outstanding. The US will do this without regard to whether the third party country has made a CAT (convention against torture) determination as to why it isn’t turning over the person itself, or has otherwise taken action (remember, some of the GITMO detainees were guys we snatched on their way out of a courthouse where the court had found they were completely innocent of any terrorism ties). However, there is at least some kind of a court process and citizenship affiliation of the person being turned over.
Again, whether this extraordinary rendition (illegal pseudo rendition) will involve the stripping, hooding, drugging, etc. or the use of “enhanced” techniques etc. on the way there aren’t really covered that explicitly by Obama’s so-called revocation of torture, any more than they were by Bush’s so called “humane treatment” piffling. Also, whether or not the US will, upon turnover, hang out and offer up torture suggestions to the now-host country, or give the country questions, complete with some belly scratching “ho hos” for the country’s interrogators to use as the basis of their “torture to order” program to get the answers the US wants (whether factual or not) isn’t much addressed in specifics. But one thing we do know is that if we are claiming a worldwide ideological WAR, the GWOT, (which we have) and if we are using that “war” footing to justify all kinds of activities (which we have) then we have to recognize the impact of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war on our actions on our “global battlefield” And while the US courts have recognized rendition to the US to face US charges, they didn’t have the wrinkles of the person being taken off a global battlefield, in violation of Article 147 of the GCs, and then shipped off to a foreign nation.
Third you have a combined category imo, but you could break it out further. That would be the psycho-pseudo renditions of person to third countries where they are not citizens and/or countries that do not have current judicial process outstanding against them. You could break this down to countries where they are not citizens, but do have outstanding judicial process, and countries where they may or may not be citizens but there is no outstanding judicial process, but I lump them together bc when you have someone who is not a citizen of Country A, and they are in Country B which does not choose to send them to Country A either through judicial process or extrajudicialy rendition directly between the countries, you have a very different situation than when someone is a citizen of the country they are being shipped to and which has a warrant outstanding. You may or may not agree with that and how many categories you get depends on if you agree or not. In any event, the primary purpose of shipment to a country that has no outstanding judicial process (whether you are collecting a citizen or non-citizen to ship to the third party country) is to do something inherently evil – whether it is to disappear, them, to torture them, etc. – it is inherently using a pseudo process for a psycho means; and I tend to think this is true also when the US involved itself as a bounty hunter to grab a non-citizen of Country A (against who the US has no indictment of its own) in Country B, to ship back to Country A.
Then there is the final category, that supposedly Obama has shut down (and that is the el-Masri situation). This is kidnapping someone in Country A to disappear them into a US controlled black site in Country B. Obama has replaced this by making Bagram his “black site” and taking the position that he can collect people from around the world and disappear them into Bagram. This is the poli-pseudo-psycho rendition. Rendition that is absolutely and without question completely illegal under any precept, except that it’s not because the President is above the law.
So I go rendition, pseudo-rendition, pseudo-psycho-rendition, poli-pseudo-pshycho-rendition. YMMV. You might just see it all as “crap” which is ok too.
In any evnt, the first category is the only one the courts of looked at. Standing arguments will be order of the day for other cases. And I guess Congress has create its own version now, of Anti-rendition Attainder. Under that process they have issued a Bill requiring that all the innocent people at GITMO who have won their habeas petitions must be continue to be held on a US military base without being released onto US soil – all without charge or hearing.
The Justice Department’s gwot may not have been that successful, but their war on law was stunningly effective.
Can I have eggs with my Hamlet?
Out of curiosity, at what point do we stop calling it “extraordinary rendition” and start using the more accurate label of “run-of-the-mill rendition”?
“Kidnapping” works for me.
It is NOT “run of the mill rendition”. Rendition is a form of extradition that has existed for a long time and has defined protocols.
As bmaz says, “rendition” is a generic term for various kinds of extradition, the delivering up of an individual from one state or country to another’s jurisdiction to face prosecution on civil or criminal charges.
Extraordinary rendition is state-sanctioned kidnapping by force, devoid of legal process, devoid of an opportunity to be heard in order to challenge the claims made that purport to justify an attempted extradition. In use for a long time, until Bush, it was a rarity. He made it routine. That’s the only thing routine about it.
What follows extraordinary rendition in CheneyWorld is also what makes it extraordinary. Indefinite detention without charge in secret prisons, torture, sometimes murder, without access to the reasonable assistance of counsel or the right to challenge the prosecutor’s case and her evidence in an open, regularly constituted, public court. Bush made that routine, too.
Kidnapping and disappearing persons used to be a war crime.
Doesn’t rendition start with President Clinton with Eric Holder taking the John Yoo part in cya crap.
“A federal appeals court in New York ruled on Monday that Maher Arar, a Canadian man who claimed that American officials sent him to Syria in 2002 to be tortured, cannot sue for damages because Congress has not authorized such suits.” Sounds like they’re just looking at the civil side and since the criminals would have to investigate the criminals carrying out these crimes and bust their good buddies, not going to happen here.
Anybody else feel we slipped the presidential restraints in favor of a king in a suit ?
It goes back further than Clinton…recall the tale of Manuel Noriega.
The CBC report, which is very brief, has links to the decision and a bit of other current background.
Re: Arar
Here’s the CCR release
http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/no-justice-canadian-rendition-victim-maher-arar-0
“… The court concluded that Arar’s case raised too many sensitive foreign policy and secrecy issues to permit relief. It leaves the federal officials involved free of any legal accountability for what they did. ”
Heck not only are they free of accountability, Larry Thompson has been kicking back as CEO for Pepsico for years now, without even a shareholder shout out.
And when the intent isn’t just for torture, but having someone’s status “permanently” resolved, like al-Libi’s was, I guess that’s just hunky dory too.
BTW bmaz et al – then Judge Sotomayor was originally part of the en banc panel and participated in oral argument, but then was elevated and didn’t participate in the decision itself.
So – any odds that even in the unlikely event of cert (which, if it didn’t happen with el-Masri is hard to imagine happening with Arar) she might have to recuse?? And if she recuses – obviously the likelihood of black letter judicial absolution of Executive branch depravity goes up even higher in that event.
If a live man cannot sue, a dead one is really precluded!
Ultimate estoppel.
This will come back and bite the US.
scalia and thomas had close relatives working in the bush campaign and felt no need to recluse themselves, so Ms. Sotomayor gets two free pass chips.
From the opinion in Arar, to give some procedural clarity –
At the Dist Court, where Arar had pled Torture Victim Act claims and Bivens type claims, stemming from his detention in the US, the conspiracy to ship to torture, the interference in the US with his right to counsel, and his treatment while detained in the US:
Everything related to the torture was spun by the Dist Ct. pursuant to the Comey Declaration filed, invoking states secrets on the DOJ’s role and the Executive Branch’s role in the shipment to torture.
The en banc (or in banc theseadays)decision was that most things were easy peasy, other than the Bivens claim:
So they go to some law dictionary definitions to at least decide that what was done to Arar isn’t classical rendition, but they decide – eh, what the hey, if we can’t torture stray Canadians when we want, what good is it being a superpower? Besides, how can we figure out if the Constitution was violated (the basis for a Bivens claim) if Congress doesn’t pass a statute?
Got that? If the Executive violates the Constitution, the court doesn’t have a role. But if Congress statutorily decides to give a damages recourse to the victims of Executive crime, THEN the court will review that legislation to see if Congress CAN make any non-impeachment effort whatsoever to bring an outlaw imperialist to rein (as opposed to reign).
g
And what is new with that; seems like what would be expected.
Supremes refuse case of Yasin Muhammed Basardh, a Yemeni in Gitmo.
Oh, bmaz, Whither Arizona? Joe Arpaio, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing. Lovely trio, with predictable results.
They pretty much ignore that Arar was not a fugitive from Syrian justice when “rendered.” And they decide that, when the Executive wants to break the law, including conspire to torture, i.e., to pursue “extraordinary” rendition that does not invovle a fugitive from justice, then the court really has not place bc it is up to the Executive to decide how it wants to violate the law, statutory and moral.
emph added
Wow – doesn’t that reasoning pretty much undo Bivens entirely? A court can’t award damages for constitutional violations – that’s just between Congress and the Executive (and of course, the Executive can just not tell Congress what it is doing too). Lovely.
Stupid question from a non-lawyer:
Is that a distinction between criminal and civil law? What options are not being precluded?
There is a difference between civil and criminal. If the US Exec branch, via its wholly owned Dept of Justice, had decided to press criminal charges for conspiracy to torture, etc. all the standing issues melt. Of course, Obama isn’t going to do that.
The babble about the opinion not necessarily precluding judicial review and oversight goes to the states secrets element, which they profess not to have reached, although they bsically use it for the “special factors” they find.
So what they are saying is a) they don’t know nothing about how to figure out whether someone should have a damages claim for Constitutional violations and Congress will have to tell them that; but if Congress does tell them to award damages – then, they maybe will review a case that falls under such a statutory damages award (instead of just pre-emptively spinning it under states secrets). Or the maybe will not.
They are saying Congress has to give them a statute first to decide whether or not they can award “Bivens” (violation of Constitutional rights) damages (which is ?? in and of itself imo). Then, if Congress does give them a statute, the court thinks it may not be precluded from exercising “oversight and review” (the how and whys of there invocation of “oversight” vis a vis a process taking place extra-judicially is also a ?? – maybe they are trying to encourage not just a damages statute but something like a FISA court to issue snatch/grab warrants for shipments to torture) of the psycho-pseudo renditions.
The effect of the stream of negatives is to say that even if Congress does cough up a statute, the court may decide it can enforce it. The implication with respect to this dicta is that the other door is left open too – they may decide that even with a statute, the states secret invocation wins and a court is precluded from review.
With courts like this, it’s easy to see where the DOJ got the idea they could just outright fabricate and destroy evidence with impunity.
Thanks, Mary. I think I actually do have a tenuous grasp on that, if I keep reading it over a few times.
I like this from the footnote 3 jabs at dissenting Judge Pooler.
I guess it’s just me, but I find it a more “remarkable proposition” that the bench would think that somewhere, somehow, our Constitution would allow for it to be within anyone’s “official duties” to encourage, facilitate and solicit extra-judicial mistreatment of non-charged, non-indicted, non-convicted, non-combatant human beings. Where is the ‘grant’ clause for such a delgation fo power to any part of our government?
Umm, might the fact that government has never claimed before to have a grant of power to solicite abuse of protected persons as an “official duty” be the basis for a lack of cite?
I’m just too mad to read much more.
I will note that one should be careful when evaluating anything from the Daily Mail, the paper that endorsed Hitler during WWII.
That being said, it has the feel of a true story.
Which/what Daily Mail story are you referencing?
The one in the post. But the Guardian has the same story.
Oh – ok, the same story was in my yahoo news links, which I think are Reuters, too, so I didn’t click through. Sorry.
I think it’s all the damned references to provoking hesitation that are making me so angry.
It should “provoke hesitation” for a court to impose accountablilty on Executive branch members who engaged, without hesitation and with much collegiality and public degredation fo their victims, in torture renditions.
I’m reeling in the years on this one – the things they think are precious, the things that pass for knowledge, the things they think are useless – I’m just not understanding. It really doesn’t feel like America when you read something like that opinion.
Justice is coming !
Justice will out in the end !
Maybe not in our lifetime, maybe not from within our country, maybe not as soon as to give relief to those slighted,to say the very least,as we would dare to dream for the innocent victims but it’s God Damn coming !
When dick warns about dithering , watch out because he knows what he’s talking about. On 9-11 dick took control of NORAD, without any military experience, and after the first tower was hit he DITHERED and kept his fat ass in the command seat of power, after which the second tower was hit, he DITHERED again which directly led to the Pentagon being hit. The guy’s criminally insane and will be brought down by JUSTICE SWEET JUSTICE.
What about illegal drugs?
About a month ago both the Afghan and Pakistani press reported on the capture of several Pakistani ethnic, British Subject combatants — if I remember the story rightly, it was a few near the Af/Pak border, and a few others in Helmand. They were, apparently embedded with the Afghani Taliban when they were captured. I don’t remember if they were captured by US, British, Afghan or other NATO military units, but there was much speculation they would be returned to British Courts to stand trial.
In recent months the British seem to have increased the pressure on Pakistan regarding allowing British Subjects to join Madrassa linked to the Taliban, either Afghani or Pakistani, and then go on to fight with the various organizations. Obviously, the primary British Concern is that they will return to GB, and organize terroristic events on British soil, but the British have also been quite loud about getting Pakistan to enforce their own laws which prohibit the Madrassas enrolling Foreign students without special exemptions that include permission from home governments. Both the British and the US funded the Musharraf Government pretty big time to enforce these rules, but the money went to waste, and now they are putting the pressure on Pakistan to enforce their laws.
No way of knowing, but SAS and CIA could very well have been in the business of just moving British Subjects caught in combat in Afghanistan back to GB for trial. CIA has the available planes, the SAS may be trading access to intelligence for flights. They are clearly following a parallel policy in putting the screws to Pak ISI and the Army on this matter. It may not, (and I stress may) be rendition at all.
A company name L-3 Communications is in the special ops (assassination) business? Wow.