US Refuses to Ban Torture Flights

Some 25 US government officials were in Geneva this past weekend to face questions from a UN panel investigating the human rights record of that country based on voluminous reports from groups like the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. While the US officials finally agreed to ban waterboarding - despite the fact that they stated that it isn't even used, they refused to end the practice of extraordinary rendition (torture flights):

In two days of questioning, the panel pushed the U.S. delegation to define the scope of torture. On Monday, Fernando Mariño Menéndez, a panel member from Spain, asked whether torture could be defined to include the forced disappearance of terrorism suspects and the establishment of secret prisons.

"I don't think one can say, per se, that it is," Bellinger replied.

Bellinger said the United States believed that some terrorism suspects posed such a threat to security that they had forgone their right to communicate with their families and others.

As for the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, in which a suspect is made to believe that he is drowning, Stimson said the revised U.S. Army Field Manual would not include the practice.

When asked about the practice of sending prisoners for questioning to countries where they could be at risk of torture, U.S. officials said the terms of the anti-torture convention did not ban such a policy.
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Yet, on April 29, 2006 in a front page New York Times article, the Bush administration declared it was concerned about sending released Gitmo prisoners to their home countries where they might face torture.

According to a State Department human rights report released in March, the Saudi authorities have used "beatings, whippings and sleep deprivation" on Saudi and foreign prisoners. The report also noted "allegations of beatings with sticks and suspension from bars by handcuffs."

Mindful of such allegations, officials of the State Department's human rights bureau, among others, have insisted that any transfer deal include clear assurances that the prisoners will not be tortured and will be treated in accordance with international humanitarian law, and that those pledges can be verified, officials familiar with the discussions said.

The Bush administration can't have it both ways.

The UN panel will release its report on May 19, 2006.