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Frontline Looks at Extraordinary Rendition
For sheer audacity, nothing beats the sight of a spokesman for the Egyptian interior ministry describing someone else's experience of being kidnapped, blindfolded, taken to a far-away prison and tortured this way: "Some people love to attract the limelight to give themselves more importance than necessary." That display of official cynicism is just one of the treats Frontline has in store for tonight's exploration of the anti-terrorist kidnapping practice known as extraordinary rendition.
The rendition subject the Egyptian interior spokesman described is Abu Omar, a hardline Egyptian-born cleric who was kidnapped by the Italians in coordination with the CIA in 2003 before being rendered to Egypt and tortured. Abu Omar's rendition was superficially a success -- the snatch worked; and he was indeed tortured -- but Italian prosecutors were able to learn the identities of the CIA operatives behind the rendition and have put them on trial in absentia.
Interestingly, Abu Omar gives a kind of non-denial denial when asked by Frontline if he's a terrorist, which crystallizes the issue at its most complex: is it acceptable to torture people who intend to carry out atrocities?
Frontline also profiles another rendition victim -- Bisher al-Rawi, a British national picked up in Gambia in 2002 after the CIA believed he had ties to al-Qaeda -- but the program also highlights how U.S. allies are taking their cues from the U.S.'s embrace of rendition as a sound counterterrorism practice. In December, following the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, the Kenyan authorities rounded up a number of Somalis at their shared border and flew them to Ethiopia for harsh treatment. Among them was the wife of an al-Qaeda operative named Fazul Abdullah, who helped pull off the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that murdered over 200 people. The Ethiopian prime minister unapologetically told Frontline, "You find the wife, you don't find the husband, and the wife is fleeing the battlefield, you do not know whether the wife is just a wife or a comrade and a colleague in the art of terrorism."
Several of the victims of the Kenyan-Ethiopian rendition were forced onto Ethiopian TV to state how well they were being treated. After the release of 16 of them, several claimed torture, and some even claimed that the FBI participated in their abuse. The bureau denies involvement, but ex-FBI counterterrorist Jack Cloonan comments, "If you wanna engage in activity that you're blaming these people for, you need to step above it, rise above it, and stick to what you know to be your way of operating, which is transparency, treat people humanely... that's what works."
Comments (28)
Jake D wrote on November 6, 2007 11:06 AM:I will agree that Abu Omar was tortured if you guys agree that 10 seconds of waterboarding, with cellophane so that water does not enter the nose or mouth, is not torture.
Troll Patrol wrote on November 6, 2007 11:12 AM:To all who love this site and who uphold human rights concerns, Troll Patrol urges that you be aware that Jake D was banned and Josh's post to that effect can be accessed by clicking "Troll Patrol." (look in the comments section... vote or comment if you prefer).
Likely there are many pretending to be the same troll. Simply ignore the ranting as you would ignore dog poop on a stroll.
Jake D wrote on November 6, 2007 11:22 AM:Cool, my own little doppelgänger -- I feel so special -- anyone else want to take me up on my proposed trade?
Troll Patrol wrote on November 6, 2007 11:33 AM:Just got an email from Josh:
"We banned his IP address a few days ago."
Fake Jake: You are banned too.
Lady Liberty wrote on November 6, 2007 11:35 AM:opposes torture - and Jake D.
RandyR wrote on November 6, 2007 11:57 AM:Josh,
Thank you for removing that particularly nasty source of torture.
Randy R
anonymouse wrote on November 6, 2007 12:06 PM:"is it acceptable to torture people who intend to carry out atrocities?"
There has always been, and unless this administration destroys civilization, will continue to be... folks who believe it is acceptable, under certain circumstances (which by the way, those SAME folks decide) to torture human beings and animals.
In the past, however, there have also been civilized people willing to either stop, if able, or prosecute afterwards, those sadists.
Apparently, "We the People" have chosen to continue electing people who destroy civilizations rather than support them. So the answer, for "We the People" at least, is "YES... We the People believe it is acceptable to torture human beings, whether or not they have been tried and found guilty and whether or not they actually have valuable information".
"WE the People" are living proof that evolution really does not exist... we are devolving into barbarians... IMHO
mamiller wrote on November 6, 2007 12:13 PM:Sure JD is an annoying troll, but we do have the option of ignoring him, which in the long run is a lot more effective, given how many ways there are to get around the IP block. Not to mention stretching our parenting skills and our ability to tolerate dissension.
Mary wrote on November 6, 2007 12:15 PM:If you have a controlled circumstance, among friends and with medical aid available, where you are voluntarily putting a piece of cellophane, that you can remove yourself anytime, over your mouth for 10 seconds its a very very different thing than coming out of being kidnapped, stripped, anally probed, drugged, hooded, put in small confinement, sleep deprived and repeatedly assaulted for days and then grabbed, drug out blindfolded, strapped to a board . . .
It's like saying that having your 4 yo point a toy gun at you playing cops and robbers is the same as a fully staged mock execution, except for the 'it's not' parts.
If Frontline doesn't hit stories like Kurnaz, el-Masri, Arar, etc. pretty hard, they are doing a huge disservice to the topic.
And I think even the reference in the story, "is it acceptable to torture people who intend to carry out atrocities" is off the point and kind of lame. I don't think anyone has anything that indicaes Omar was planning to carry out atrocities.
As a matter of fact, most of the info about his rendition indicates that the initial efforts were to try to get him to be a plant and source. Not everyone who has criticisms of America and hugely resents American policies and actions that have left the bodies of so many Arab Muslims bloodied and maimed and so many children dead, orphaned, malnourished etc. is planning atrocities. Even so, the issue of how you treat someone is about you, not them.
So the question becomes, when is it ok to do depraved, evil things.
Besides, in the end, the law has already addressed this question. If someone truly has a ticking time bomb scenario and takes actions that are actually focused on addressing that situation, they can put forward a defense for their actions in their court proceedings.
Blacksiting people while engaging in days, weeks, months and years of continued, unrelenting depravity towards them goes so far beyond any such scenario that there aren't really any questions left.
Just the answer.
Which is very clear.
Bill W wrote on November 6, 2007 12:38 PM:Orwell: "Notes on Nationalism"
"All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. […] Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage—torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians—which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side." […] "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
Powkat wrote on November 6, 2007 12:47 PM:What have we become that we even ask the question is torture acceptable in some cases? If the answer is yes we betray every claim we have made to being a just society.
We have a president and vice-president (was ever the position more aptly named) who believe that anything goes and that their job description renders them infallable, an AG to be who isn't sure if a behavior defined as torture by all reasonable people IS torture, and a Congress too bought and paid for by the industrial war machine to make a protest. Any semblance of a free press has long vanished into a corporate morass of infotainment and 'newsmen' more concerned with their social standing in DC than with their function as reporters.
The only people who stand up to this are regarded as the crazy fringe. Please tell me this is the darkness before the dawn.
'I don't know a soul that's not been battered, I don't have a friend who feels at ease. I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or driven to its knees." Paul Simon
Bumper Sticker wrote on November 6, 2007 12:48 PM:Torture: Harms people and institutions
Mary wrote on November 6, 2007 12:59 PM:I'm guessing Jake D and his comrades were AGAINST waterboarding when it was Japanese soldiers doing same to American Navy prisoners. George Bush's Daddy certainly was. America PROSECUTED and PUNISHED waterboarders for war crimes during the Greatest Generation's days.
Established AMerican law that waterboarding is a war crime.
Odd, how these nincompoops like Jake D. practice situational ethics, eh?
No honor or dignity amongst the knuckle draggers.
Drew Rodgers wrote on November 6, 2007 12:59 PM:We are the torturers. It's done in our name and for our alleged protection. Those of us who have a problem with that have a clear moral imperative to change it by any and all means necessary.
Passing through an AG nominee that does not categorically condemn waterboarding as illegal torture is NOT a good first step.
Bill in Chicago wrote on November 6, 2007 1:33 PM:FYI, Abu Omar did not simply give non-denial denials to Frontline. He was caught dead-to-rights by Italian intelligence, which had caught on to his racket and was wiretapping him and his cohorts prior to the CIA snatch. You can read more about that here:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,,1120658,00.html
The real corollary question regarding Omar is who got the better information - the Italians with their surreptitious (and presumably legal) wiretaps, or the CIA with their rendition.
Mary wrote on November 6, 2007 1:54 PM:(there are two different Mary's on this thread btw)
Omar was being watched by the Italians and they were gaining intelligence (although I do not receall that they had any evidence of plans for atrocities as much as the more generic recruitment pitches did they?)
So the CIA activity did crater the Italian operaton (and Italy did today round up a terrorist cell with help from Portugal and Britain - all legally)
That's just one of the negative outcomes. We also have some legal extraditions we are waiting on - like the arms seller being held in Spain - which would, in any fair system, have to be adversely impacted by the fact that we are now a state sponsor of torture with an AG who won't rule out that we will be waterboarding prisoners in our custody.
But better information or worse information is a question that will always be almost impossible to answer bc you would have to know both outcomes and you can't.
Which leaves as the real question - who are you. In the end, that's the motivation for what you do - who you are. I believe Olberman's guest last night - the Rear Admiral IIRC - summed it up. Paraphrased - Torture is for the stupid, the lazy and those who need to hide from their own fears and weaknesses behind a false bravado.
Jeremy wrote on November 6, 2007 1:59 PM:"[I]s it acceptable to torture people who intend to carry out atrocities?"
No.
Not very complex now, is it?
An Outhouse wrote on November 6, 2007 3:05 PM:Jake D -
Will you admit that forcing water into your lungs to simulate drowning until you sign a statement where you admit to be a senior Al Queda operative is torture?
Because you will sign it.
Eventually.
You can be the next number three.
That's what people are talking about. Not the truth, but a confession. Whatever it takes.
greg wrote on November 6, 2007 3:09 PM:Bill W --
I think Rudy's quote is appropriate here:
"It depends on who does it."
Phil Graves wrote on November 6, 2007 3:17 PM:It is my suspicion that the Italian operation was sabotaged to prolong and enable Al Qaeda activities for the political gain of the GOP. They must have made the cold calculation that even if AQ had nuclear weapons, they couldn't have enough to do lasting damage to the US economy or infrastructure and the PR result would be a GOP-run totalitarian government with no checks on power and the authority to round people up and dispose of or reeducate the white ones and deport the rest. They've done the math and they have every phone in the world tapped, potentially every computer monitored, all radio monitored.
Who knows what the people behind the administration can and can't do?
shipwreckedcrew wrote on November 6, 2007 4:11 PM:Will Hillary prosecute Bill if she is elected?
Slick Willie had an extraordinary rendition policy before Bush. The OLC opinion on the subject was written by Walter Dellinger.
The ACLU says it was illegal under the Clinton Admin. just as much as under the Bush Admin.
Will Hillary prosecute both at the urging of MoveOn?
shipwreckedcrew wrote on November 6, 2007 4:18 PM:Nobody is looking for a "confession" from coercive interrogations. What would be the purpose of that?
What they are looking for is intelligence information that can be used in the field.
False information -- which terrorist operatives are trained to give -- can usually be run to ground and determined to be false.
Good information -- like the info gained from KSM -- can be used to interupt and detain other terror operatives.
Or do you think its simply kismet that we have not suffered a second attack on US soil in 6+ years?
Johann wrote on November 6, 2007 4:29 PM:"is it acceptable to torture people who intend to carry out atrocities?"
Can anyone tell me how it will be determined that a person 'intends to carry out an atrocity' and how their intentions will be identified?
Or is this just like identifying as a "terrorist" anyone who happens to be killed by American troops or mercenaries in Iraq.
The answer to this question should always be a resounding NO!
mcboo wrote on November 6, 2007 4:58 PM:"Interestingly, Abu Omar gives a kind of non-denial denial when asked by Frontline if he's a terrorist, which crystallizes the issue at its most complex: is it acceptable to torture people who intend to carry out atrocities?"
The above question troubles me on two points and offers no complexity for me at all: first it subtly implies that there may be situations in which torture IS acceptable (there are never situations that warrant torture, ever) and second it provides speculation about a persons possible future actions as the justification to indeed use torture. Speculation and assumption are very dangerous (and often very wrong) practices. They are particularly dangerous when married to something as despicable as torture.
I think it is important for us to remember that we are supposed to be guided by the rule of law. The central pillar of our law is that all people are innocent until proven guilty. If this is cast aside even for an instant then the entire structure collapses and no one is safe. And while freedom can be and often is a dangerous state in which to live, if you place it in a cage to protect it from danger it will no longer be freedom. You can not make acceptations to the presumption of innocence. You can not allow yourself to live in perpetual fear and break the law because you THINK someone else MIGHT break the law. To abandon the law (and reason) in our quest - for justice or peace or democracy or whatever it is we think we're doing - is to not only abandon what it is we're supposed to be protecting and represent but it also makes us as guilty and reprehensible as those who actually have brought harm to us and to others.
AC wrote on November 6, 2007 6:48 PM:Love the Orwell re: nationalism above. I wish Christopher Hitchens would have rolled nationalism into his "God is Not Great" arguement. Nationalism and religion(ism) are so startlingly similar in the effect they have on rational thought. They are both "poison."
Bill wrote on November 6, 2007 7:49 PM:God, nationalism, money, and the state are not poison for rational thought. The problem is that people devoid of rational thought are prone to believing people devoid of character when they use those concepts to promote their own agenda.
Uncle_Meat wrote on November 6, 2007 8:47 PM:"shipwreckedcrew wrote on November 6, 2007 4:18 PM
Or do you think its simply kismet that we have not suffered a second attack on US soil in 6+ years?"
You seriously think 19 guys with boxcutters pulled that stunt off? Seriously?!?
Please, go and research false flag operations.
shipwreckedcrew wrote on November 6, 2007 11:32 PM:LOL -- I wonder if Marshall realizes his little blog here is a denizen of "Truthers".
Give money to Paul yesterday?