Extraordinary rendition

"Extraordinary rendition"  (statecraft)
Interest of	Jeffrey Kaye
Kidnapping and forced transfer of individuals by intelligence agencies from one legal jurisdiction to another without recourse to legal proceedings.

"Extraordinary rendition" is the imprisonment and forced transfer of individuals by intelligence agencies from one legal jurisdiction to another without recourse to legal proceedings such as extradition. When carried out by groups other than intelligence agencies, this is called kidnapping and person trafficking.

It is carried out in by the CIA in secret, often combined with kidnapping (for example, Mordechai Vanunu) and/or drug trafficking. The purpose of the transfer is to to circumvent the legal process, for example avoiding a formal extradition or circumventing restrictions about subjecting the individual to torture or murder. No one is known to have faced legal consequences for this practice.

Origins

At least far back as Allen Dulles, the CIA has carried out extraordinary rendition. An early cases of CIA kidnapping was carried out under cutout Robert Mayhew. Jose de Glenda was an exile from the Trujillo government. At Colombia University he was writing a PhD on Trujillo's government. After he turned down offers to buy his PhD thesis, CIA contractors under Mayhew had De Glenda captured, drugged, and flown to the Dominican Republic where he was tortured and assassinated by agents of Trujillo. The practice of rendition but is estimated^{[By whom?]} to be at least several hundred per year.

Black sites in Europe

Extraordinary Rendition flights by the CIA, as reported by Rzeczpospolita

In January 2005, Swiss senator Dick Marty, representative at the Council of Europe in charge of the European investigations, concluded that 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA in Europe — thus qualifying as ghost detainees — and then rendered to a country where they may have been tortured. Marty qualified the sequestration of Abu Omar in Milan in February 2003 as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition."

Legal status

The Guardian reported on 5 December 2005, that the government of the UK is "guilty of breaking international law if it knowingly allowed secret CIA "rendition" flights of terror suspects to land at UK airports, according to a report by American legal scholars."

War on Terror

Full article: “War on Terror”

The practice is not integral to the "War on Terror", but correlated with it. Both contribute to a climate of fear. The number of "rendition" cases (and their purposes) is not publicly acknowledged, which is excused by the pretext of "national security". The label of "suspected terrorist" is used to chill interest in those held, for example, at Guantanamo Bay.

Torture

A prisoner being strapped down on board a plane before rendition

Imprisonment and smuggling of victims is closely connected to their torture. Swiss senator Dick Marty referred to the case of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition". On 4 November 2009, an Italian judge convicted in absentia 22 CIA agents, a USAF colonel and two Italian secret agents of the kidnap. Eight other American and Italian defendants were acquitted. A common pattern is to transfer such victims to remote locations to facilitate their torture, either for pragmatic purposes or to minimise potential legal issues.

Drug trafficking

Full article: CIA/Drug trafficking

The use of secret international flights for rendition must be seen in context of the CIA's long history of drug trafficking. At least two CIA aircraft used to transport prisoners were later used to transport tonnes of cocaine. In 2006, a DC-9 that landed in Mexico (later dubbed 'Cocaine 1') was found to have tonnes of the drug on board. as XC-LJZ. In 2007 a Gulfstream jet crashed in Mexico with between 3 and 6.3 tonnes of cocaine on board. It had been regularly used by the CIA for rendition to Guantanamo Bay.

Weblinks

• The Rendition Project (now archive)

 

“Extraordinary rendition” victims on Wikispooks

Title	Description
William Francis Buckley	CIA Station Chief in Beirut, captured by Hezbollah.
Khalid El-Masri	Kidnapped for months by the CIA after a case of mistaken identity. His lawsuit was dismissed on grounds of "national security"
Álvaro Gomez-Hurtado	Spooky Colombian diplomat who attended Le Cercle. Assassinated in 1995
Robert Nairac	British soldier who was abducted and killed by the IRA in 1977 while visiting a bar in South Armagh.
Abu Omar	An Egyptian cleric who was kindnapped in Milan by the CIA in 2003 and sent to Egypt where he was subject to torture.
Gul Rahman	Kidnapped and tortured to death by the CIA.
Hanns Martin Schleyer
René Schneider	The commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army at the time of the 1970 Chilean presidential election, when he was assassinated during a botched kidnapping attempt.
Aafia Siddiqui	American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist, tortured and raped for years by US forces, now serving a life sentence after a trial of a highly questionable nature.
Ivan Stambolić	Retired Serbian politician killed for murky motives
Mordechai Vanunu	The former Israeli nuclear technician who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986.He was captured by Mossad, kidnapped and subsequently imprisoned for 18 years, including 11 years in solitary confinement. He continues to be subject to harrassment and forbidden to speak to foreigners or to leave Israel.
Abu Zubaydah	A prisoner of the deep state, subjected to torture, denied legal process, still in detention for over 20 years.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Black site	“They would have had to all three tie their hands and feet together, shove rags down their throats, put a mask over their face, made a noose, hung it from the ceiling on the side of the cellblock, jumped into the noose, and hung themselves simultaneously. In a cellblock where guards are ordered to check on detainees every four minutes. They had a policy that if a detainee is hunger-striking, he cannot be interrogated, I believe the number-one mission in JTF-GTMO (Joint Task Force Guantanamo) at the time was, stop the hunger strikes at all costs. I think you get rid of the people that provoked the hunger strikes and you get rid of the problem. After the deaths, there were no hunger strikes for a long period of time.”	Joseph Hickman	2015
Black site	“A small group of people in Johnston County NC are investigating their state’s role in the CIA's torture and rendition program. Last fall, they had a series of public hearings on the subject and on May 7th they're planning to meet with their commissioners in an effort to compel their county's very conservative board of commissioners to issue a ban on the use of public resources for rendition or torture, and to publicly acknowledge what they found: that a CIA contractor called Aero operating out of the local county airport, handled some 80% of rendition flights between September 2001 and March 2004.”	Vice News	2018
Black site	“The European Parliament denounces the lack of co-operation of many member states and of the Council of the European Union with the investigation; Regrets that European countries have been relinquishing control over their airspace and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being used for illegal transportation of detainees; Calls for the closure of [the US military detention mission in] Guantanamo and for European countries immediately to seek the return of their citizens and residents who are being held illegally by the US authorities; Considers that all European countries should initiate independent investigations into all stopovers by civilian aircraft [hired by] the CIA; Urges that a ban or system of inspections be introduced for all CIA-operated aircraft known to have been involved in extraordinary rendition”	European Parliament	2006
Black site	“They always followed the same procedure. We were always told to keep away. The planes would stay at the end of the runway, often with their engines running. A couple of military vans from the nearby intelligence base would go up to them, stay a while and then drive off, out of the airport. "I saw several of these flights but never saw inside the vans because they had tinted windows and they never stopped at the terminal building”	Mariola Przewlocka	2006
Craig Murray	“Can I just say how pleasant it is to be vindicated ten years after being sacked by Jack Straw for opposing the torture and extraordinary rendition programme – which Blair and Straw claimed I was inventing.”	Craig Murray	December 2014

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Child Soldier Coerced Into Plea-Bargain	article	7 October 2010	Keith Jones
Document:My CIA Rendition	statement	17 March 2011	Abu Omar
Document:Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report	webpage	11 June 2007	Dick Marty
Document:The Rendition of Abu Omar	article	August 2007	John Foot
Document:Torture Inquiry must reveal the Truth	article	7 July 2010	Peter Oborne
File:CIA Shannon Report 9 2 09.pdf	report	9 February 2008	Edward Horgan
File:EU20060124Jdoc032006E.pdf	report	24 January 2006	Dick Marty
File:EUEdoc10957.pdf	report	12 June 2006
File:EUResolutionMarty.pdf	legal document	8 September 2011	Dick Marty

 

Convicted of Extraordinary rendition

Person	Born	Died	Nationality	Summary	Description
Hüseyin Baybaşin	25 December 1956			Drug trafficker Deep state actor	A druglord with close and acknowledged ties to Turkish government leaders, who also worked as an informer for UK Customs & Excise. Now in prison
Manuel Contreras	4 May 1929	7 August 2015	Chile	Spook	Chilean spymaster.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.