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Comment in another thread: “Under Obama no high-value detainees reached Guatanamo Bay detention center.” My bewildered response to this, are you trained in believing all White House storytelling? WTF No surprise Obama won the prize for best sales pitch beating corporate marketers in the USA.
If you kill the AQ and Taliban suspects (too bad for bystanders and family) you eliminate indeed the possibility of capture by Pakistan forces as was customary under the Bush/Cheney years. No high-value detainees, means no rendition and no torture. All issues taken off the table in a liberal way. I suspect you have no concern over the Bagram detainees and torture in the Afghan war theater. The European members of NATO/ISAF are legally bound NOT to transfer their detainees to anyone without monitoring to prevent torture. Britain has some issues with adhering to International Law, somehow their legal system functions where ours has broken down.
UK Government demands return of Bagram prisoner Yunus Rahmatullah from US custody
(Reprieve) Dec. 21, 2011 – The British Government has demanded the return of a prisoner originally detained by UK forces from the US-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan, where he has been held without charge or trial for nearly eight years.
Yunus Rahmatullah was picked up by UK forces in Iraq in 2004, handed to the US and rendered to Afghanistan. Under a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ – designed to protect the British Government from complicity in war crimes – the UK retained the power to demand Mr Rahmatullah’s return to British custody at any time.
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Yunus RahmatullahIn response to last week’s order from the Court of Appeal that Mr Rahmatullah should effectively be either charged or released, the UK Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence have now written to the US Department of Defense, to “request that the United States transfers Mr Rahmatullah to UK custody in order for him to be released.”
Should the US fail to comply with the request, Britain risks being put in breach of the Geneva Conventions, and British officials could face prosecution for war crimes. Such a failure would also raise serious questions over how far Britain could trust the US in a range of other international agreements governing the transfer of prisoners – including the controversial extradition treaty between the two countries.
Judges today gave the British Government until 18 January 2012 to secure Mr Rahmatullah’s release from US custody.
Obama’s extreme rendition policy is issued, but results still uncertain
On Aug. 24, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies had finished its review. The United States will continue to send individuals to other countries, stated a Department of Justice Press press release, but the United States will seek “assurances from the receiving country” that the suspect will not be tortured. The recommendations specifically called on the Department of State to be involved in evaluating those assurances and for the Inspector Generals of the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security to submit annual reports on transfers [for layman = rendition] conducted by each of their agencies. The report also recommends that agencies obtaining assurances from foreign countries insist on a monitoring mechanism or establish a monitoring mechanism, to ensure that the individual is not tortured. The specific recommendations themselves are classified, however.
Under Obama Administration, Renditions–and Secrecy Around Them–Continue
(ProPublica) Sept. 6, 2011 – According to Joanne Mariner, director of the human rights program at Hunter College, the Libya case is “a really compelling example of how diplomatic assurances do not work.” She says that while there aren’t known cases of the Obama administration using rendition in a problematic way, it’s not clear whether diplomatic assurances have been any more meaningful under this administraton than the last.
“What the Obama administration has said is not terribly reassuring,” Mariner said, pointing to a general lack of transparency. “What we do know is that this administration has publicly stood behind the concept of diplomatic assurances and has expressed confidence in diplomatic assurances.”
At least one Obama administration official has maintained that rendition is legal under U.S. law, even if the receiving country might torture the suspect. As the Washington Post’s SpyTalk blog noted, CIA assistant General Counsel Daniel Pines, writing for a law journal last year, asserted that while U.S. officials could not themselves torture suspects during rendition, “U.S. law does not even preclude the United States from rendering an individual to a foreign location where he or she could be abused or tortured.” Pines said he was expressing his own views, and not the official views of the CIA or U.S. government.
- US only detaining nation in Afghanistan without a monitoring program in place
- Black Hole facility inside US run Bagram detention center
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
