Hawkeye Area ACLU

A Call to End All Renditions

Marjorie Cohn on behalf of Jurist Legal News and Research

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year. Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a person is abducted without any legal proceedings and transferred to a foreign country for detention and interrogation, often tortured.

Mohamed and four other plaintiffs are accusing Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. of flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. In Mohamed’s case, two British justices accused the Bush administration of pressuring the British government to block the release of evidence that was “relevant to allegations of torture” of Mohamed.

Twenty-five lines edited out of the court documents included details about how Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel as well as other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding “is very far down the list of things they did,” according to a British official quoted by the Telegraph (UK).

Appeals court urged to reject rendition case

Obama officials cite 'state secrets' privilege, which Bush invoked in winning a dismissal of the same suit last year.
Maura Dolan and Carol J. Williams of the Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Reporting from San Francisco and Los Angeles -- The Obama administration urged a federal appeals court Monday to toss out a lawsuit about CIA clandestine operations in the alleged kidnapping and torture of terrorism suspects.

At the same time, Justice Department officials in Washington pledged to review all cases in which the Bush administration invoked the right to protect state secrets and pledged to ask for secrecy "only in legally appropriate situations."

Obama Endorses Bush Secrecy On Torture And Rendition

ACLU National
NEW YORK, NY - After the British High Court ruled that evidence of British resident Binyam Mohamed's extraordinary rendition and torture at Guantánamo Bay must remain secret because of threats made by the Bush administration to halt intelligence sharing, the Obama administration told the BBC today in a written statement: "The United States thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens."