Extraordinary Rendition
Especially after the start of war on terror, United States has been accused of illegal interrogation techniques and alleged extrajudicial transfer of persons from one state (or country) to another. Extraordinary rendition is the term used to describe such extrajudicial transfer (also called irregular rendition). United States is accused of transferring suspected terrorist to countries which allow harsh interrogation techniques. Some critics call such acts by US as torture by proxy. United States officials however deny these allegations and stand by the article 3 of United Nation Convention Against Torture.
Legal rendition deals with `handing over` of foreign defendants. However, extraordinary rendition is an `extralegal` process of taking the suspected person into custody and keeping him in detention in a third party country without involving the rendering country’s judiciary and without having the detained person on US soil.
Scott Horton, an expert on international law and a critic of Bush administration, has often accused CIA of being involved in these activities of torture by proxy. Hundreds of people are suspected to have been transferred to a third party state (often transiting through secret detention centers known as `black sites`) by CIA in cooperation with the governments of such states.
Such allegations have often been the center of moral, political debates. The Council of Europe report on investigation on this matter was released in June 2006.The report estimated that the number of the `ghost detainees` was one hundred. Majority of the members of the EU Parliament endorsed the report’s conclusion and criticized several European government bodies and their intelligence agencies for not cooperating with such investigations.
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