By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 9 (IPS) - Six countries -- the United States,
Britain, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan -- have been singled
out for violating international human rights conventions by
deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria,
Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured.
The charges, which come at a time when the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) is accused of running secret detention centres
overseas, have been catalogued in a 15-page U.N. report presented to
the 191-member General Assembly by Manfred Nowak, a special
rapporteur on torture.
"Several governments, in the fight against terrorism, have
transferred or proposed to return alleged terrorist suspects to
countries where they may be at risk of torture or ill-treatment,"
says the report titled "Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment".
The study cites Article 3 of the U.N. Convention Against Torture,
which says "clearly and unequivocally" that "No State party shall
expel, return ('refouler') or extradite a person to another State
where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be
danger of being subjected to torture."
The practice of deportation has been strongly criticised by several
human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch.
But countries such as the United States and Sweden have justified
the extradition on the ground that countries receiving the deportees
have given "diplomatic assurances or formal guarantees" that there
will be no torture, ill-treatment or the death penalty.
But according to Nowak, "diplomatic assurances are unreliable and
ineffective in the protection against torture and ill-treatment and
such assurances are sought usually from States where the practice of
torture is systematic".
He also points out that diplomatic assurances are not legally
binding. "Therefore they carry no legal effect and no
accountability, if breached, and the person whom the assurances aim
to protect has no recourse if the assurances are violated."
In a separate report titled "Protecting Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms while Countering Terrorism", U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan pointedly says that "while States have the duty to protect
their citizens against terrorism, counter-terrorist measures must be
in conformity with international human rights, humanitarian and
refugee law".
"The Secretary-General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and
many human rights experts continue to express concern that many
counter-terrorism measures are infringing on human rights and
fundamental freedoms," the report warns.
Both U.N. reports are currently before the General Assembly's Third
Committee dealing with social, humanitarian and cultural issues.
Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to the Washington-based Middle
East Report, concurs with the arguments by U.N. officials and human
rights experts condemning the deportation of terrorist suspects.
"The conclusions of the new U.N. report and concerns expressed in it
strike me as entirely warranted, all the more so because there is
concrete and indisputable evidence from recent cases to demonstrate
the validity of the report's conclusions and concerns, as well as
evidence that intelligence personnel from the rendering countries
play a role in such interrogations and procedures," he told IPS.
Why are so-called "renditions" employed in the first place? Rabanni
asked. "It seems to me that in many, and probably most cases, the
reasoning behind them is quite simple: governments in countries
resorting to renditions are unable to demonstrate the validity of
their claims and suspicions against suspects to the satisfaction of
national courts, or to do so while observing laws that guarantee due
process that may be upheld by these courts," he said.
Or, he argued, governments may have other reasons to deport
undesired individuals, to whom they previously granted asylum, back
to their countries of origin.
The purpose is thus to exploit what is often the tenuous residency
status of rendered individuals to permit the courts and security
forces in countries of origin to "sort them out" -- to use more
robust interrogation techniques like physical torture and credible
threats against loved ones to extract punishable confessions or
apply emergency laws to put them behind bars without the
inconvenience of due process, he said.
"An added benefit is that all this tends to take place far away from
the limelight of publicity, in environments where media and access
are typically strictly controlled or forbidden entirely," Rabbani
told IPS.
Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University
of Illinois College of Law, is particularly critical of the policies
of the administration of President George W. Bush -- specifically on
renditions.
He condemned the "reprehensive policy known euphemistically
as 'extraordinary renditions'" that involve both the "enforced
disappearances of persons" and torture, as being "widespread"
and "systematic."
Such acts, Boyle told IPS, constitute a "crime against humanity" as
defined by Article 7 of the Rome Statute for the International
Criminal Court (ICC).
"That is precisely why the Bush Jr. administration has done
everything humanly possible to sabotage the ICC," he added.
To the contrary, Boyle argued, everyone in the chain of command
responsible for this criminal policy -- from Bush down through Vice
President Dick Cheney, National Intelligence Director John
Negroponte, CIA Director Porter Goss and operatives at the
Clandestine Services Unit of the CIA -- "must be prosecuted under
both U.S. domestic criminal law, international criminal law, and the
domestic criminal legal systems of every state in the world".
Boyle also pointed out that there is no statute of limitations for
such grievous international crimes.
"Furthermore, all Bush Jr. administration lawyers at the White
House, the Department of Justice, and the CIA, inter alia, who
signed off on 'extraordinary renditions' must also be prosecuted for
aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture,
enforced disappearances, murder, and kidnapping, " said Boyle, the
author of "Destroying World Order" (2005) and "Biowarfare and
Terrorism" (2005).
He said that Italy is correctly starting to do this. Other states
are obligated to follow under basic principles of both treaty and
customary international law, Boyle added.
Rabbani dismissed the so-called diplomatic assurances on
deportations as "largely meaningless".
"In reality, this is Guantanamo Bay (the U.S. detention facility for
terror suspects in Cuba) on a global scale."
Rabbani said there is no persuasive explanation of why else
renditions have in the past several years become a weapon of choice
for officials who have demonstrated a total contempt for the rule of
law, and have very publicly indicated their determination to
leapfrog restrictions, such as the Geneva Conventions and
longstanding protections of civil liberties, on their handling of
suspects.
"Why else governments would willingly deport suspects they claim
pose serious threats to their own national security, is beyond me,"
Rabbani added. (END/2005)
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
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