By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 3:48pm
There are many awful legacies of the Bush administration's criminal embrace of torture in the months and years following the 9/11 attacks. Among the most agonizing — for the torture victims themselves, and for the lawyers who have represented them — is that not a single one of those victims has had his day in court. And not a single court that has been faced with a torture suit has addressed the core question of whether the victims' legal rights were violated.
Last month, the Supreme Court announced it would not hear the case we brought against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of five victims of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. Our lawsuit charged that the company knowingly provided direct logistical support to the aircraft and crews used by the CIA for the kidnapping and torture program.
We filed the lawsuit back in May 2007, and while the federal government wasn't named as a defendant in the suit, the government intervened in the case anyway to shield Jeppesen with the "state secrets" privilege, asserting that even allowing the case to be heard in a court of law would jeopardize national security. But as ACLU legal director Steve Shapiro said after the Supreme Court's refused to hear the case: "In a nation committed to the rule of law, unlawful activity should be exposed, not hidden behind a 'state secrets' designation."
For almost a decade, the American public has been told time and time again that some of our government's most controversial national security policies and programs are "secret." From warrantless wiretapping to the CIA's torture and "targeted killing" programs, the government has often insisted that our security requires secrecy, and that information about these programs is too sensitive to be shared with the public — even claiming state secrets to have the information shielded from judicial scrutiny.
It's déjà vu for another victim of the Bush administration's extraordinary rendition program.
This morning, the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear the case of extraordinary rendition victim Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was stopped in 2002 during a layover at JFK and subsequently sent to Syria, where he was confined in an underground grave-like cell for nearly a year and tortured. While detained, he was given limited access to Canadian government officials, but denied access to a lawyer. Without substantiating its claims, the Bush administration accused Arar of ties to al Qaeda. However, neither the U.S. nor Syria ever charged him with a crime during his incarceration, and 10 months and 10 days after his transfer to Syria for interrogation and torture, he was released without explanation or apology.
Today, the English Court of Appeals ordered the publication of previously secret information pertaining to the abuse of Binyam Mohamed, a former British detainee who was held in U.S. custody. Today's decision affirmed an earlier High Court ruling that ordered the release of seven paragraphs that the British government sought to suppress. The paragraphs reveal what the whole world already knew: the British government's complicity with the United States in the torture of Mohamed.
Today, at 10:00 a.m. PST, we'll be in federal appeals court in San Francisco to argue that our lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. for its role in the Bush administration's unlawful "extraordinary rendition" program should go forward. The government has repeatedly misused the state secrets privilege in an attempt to have the case thrown out. To this day, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture policies has had his day in court.
Since 2003, the ACLU and other U.S. human rights organizations have filed dozens of cases relating to the abuse and torture of prisoners. Some of these cases seek to enforce requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Others seek to impose civil liability on those who authorized or perpetrated the abuse.
It's déjà vu for another victim of the Bush administration's extraordinary rendition program.