The robust defence of ”rendition” (flying terror suspects abroad for interrogation) offered this week by the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, marks the export to a European audience of a position on torture that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the George W Bush administration.
Rice’s arguments hinge on her insistence that rendition is a legitimate and necessary tool for the changed circumstances brought by the war on terror. ”The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice,” she said.
Rice went on to note that the practice had been deployed ”for decades” before the terror attacks of September 11 2001. ”Its use is not unique to the United States, or to the current administration,” she said.
However, her assurances that spiriting terror suspects away to clandestine prisons is a legitimate tactic did not carry much weight with human rights organisations or legal scholars. They argued that the sole use of extraordinary rendition was to transport a suspect to a locale that was beyond the reach of the law — and so at risk of torture.
”The argument makes no sense unless there is an assumption that the purpose of rendition is to send people to a place where things could be done to them that could not be done in the US,” said David Luban, a law professor at George-town University.
”Rendition doesn’t become a tool in the war against terror unless people are being sent to a place where they can be interrogated harshly.”
In her statement, Rice said rendition was necessary in instances where local governments did not have the capacity to prosecute a terror suspect, or in cases where al-Qaeda members were operating in remote areas far from an operational justice system.
However, the majority of the two dozen or so terror suspects known to have been subjected to rendition were captured in urban areas. Some were taken in Europe. ”Most of the ghost detainees on the list were captured in major cities like Bangkok and Karachi,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Amid the outrage in Europe over the secret prisons, the administration faces calls at home from Democrats for an investigation into the treatment of so-called ”ghost detainees”.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, has been criticised for resisting draft legislation promoted by Senator John McCain, barring inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners in US custody. Cheney has lobbied against the legislation, arguing that it tied the US’s hands in its ”war on terror”. He called for a clause exempting the CIA, and Bush threatened to block the Bill.
However, the US appeared to bow to pressure on Wednesday by declaring it would respect international laws against cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners.
After being bombarded with questions about the alleged prisons in eastern Europe while in Ukraine, Rice said: ”As a matter of … policy, the US’s obligations under the [UN convention against torture], which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, extends to US personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the US or outside the US.”
A White House official said Rice had ”stated our administration’s policy”. Asked whether that meant the opposition to the McCain legislation would be dropped, the official said only that the national security adviser, Steven Hadley, was talking to McCain about the issue. Officials in McCain’s office were not available for comment.
But human rights organisations complained that the Bush administration had left itself loopholes that would permit harsh interrogation techniques and the transfer of detainees to allied governments who did carry out torture.
During the past four years, critics say the Bush administration has adopted an exceedingly narrow definition of torture, allowing interrogators to use techniques such as stress positions, sleep deprivation and waterboarding, where suspects are strapped to a board and plunged into water to the point of drowning.
A report last month, which said the CIA was running the secret prisons for terror suspects, focused scrutiny on the possible legal loopholes the US could exploit.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sent Rice a formal letter on behalf of the European Union, requesting ”clarification” of the reports. The jails, believed to be in Poland and Romania, were shut down before Rice’s European tour, according to ABC News, and 11 al-Qaeda suspects held there reportedly flown to North Africa.
”Rice is wandering around Europe saying these things,” said Caroll Bogert, of HRW. ”When they whisked the [detainees] out of Romania and Poland, where did they take them? Who are the disappeared?”
Bogert said the Bush administration’s attempt to define torture so narrowly it excluded many extreme interrogation methods, cast doubt on the new pledge to abide by international conventions. ”They stretch all these definitions to their most elastic breaking point,” she said. — Â