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INTERIGHTS Bulletin Volume 16 Number 1 2010
Editorial Vesselina Vandova In the Polish village of Stare Kiejkuty there is an intelligence training school with a revealing history. During the Second World War the Nazi SS used the Stare Kiejkuty site for intelligencegathering. After the war, it served as a centre for Soviet military intelligence (in 1968 it was from here that the operation to crush the Prague Spring was planned). And in 2005, allegations surfaced that it had been used between 2003 and 2005 by the United States of America’s Central Intelligence Authority (CIA) to detain, interrogate and torture terrorist suspects abducted from the streets of Asia and Africa.* In the first two instances, Stare Kiejkuty was commandeered by an occupying power: Germany during the Second World War, and the Soviet Union in the post-war years. But Poland’s situation now is very different. If Poland, as alleged, has let the CIA use its territory and its Stare Kiejkuty base, it has done so as a free and democratic state. This striking difference highlights a key characteristic of the extraordinary rendition programme of the USA since 11 September 2001. Not only does this programme deliberately bypass legal process, but it also encourages other states to jettison the rule of law. Poland is by no means the only state which has cooperated with the USA at the expense of fundamental rights and the rule of law. The rendition programme cannot work unless other states provide assistance in abduction and secret detention, or provide intelligence information, airports, personnel, or facilities such as the Polish base. It depends for its existence, therefore, upon fostering a culture in which international law is seen as an obstacle which only a coordinated international
joint effort by enlightened states can get around. The current edition of INTERIGHTS’ Bulletin is part of our work to challenge these unusual and complex violations of basic human rights and of the rule of law. As Helen Duffy’s and Judy Oder’s articles both detail, over the course of about five years, as a result of the illicit collaboration between states, hundreds of individuals have been kidnapped, unlawfully transferred between countries, detained incommunicado, ill-treated and tortured in order to extract information about suspected terrorist activities. Families have lived for years in anguish and uncertainty about the whereabouts of their husbands, sons, and fathers, fearing they might never see them again. Helen Duffy’s article defines these violations under several international legal regimes and looks into questions about the responsibility of states under human rights and general international law. Judy Oder’s article examines several cases of terrorist suspects kidnapped in various African states, where the practice of unlawful transfer and incommunicado and secret detention appears to continue. It also reviews the complaints brought before local courts and the African legal mechanisms, which provide for the accountability of states for their participation in the rendition programme. The challenges in achieving accountability of states and redress for persons who have suffered rendition and secret detention are immense and require long-term efforts. As Wolfgang Kaleck and Andreas Schüller’s article illustrates, the main obstacles to date have been the secrecy that still taints
the CIA rendition programme, and the tactics of states to avoid judicial scrutiny at all costs. The case studies of Maher Arar and Khaled El-Masri (by Ben Wizner and Steven Watt), Binyam Mohamed (by Rachel Fleetwood), and of the alleged Polish secret site (by Adam Bodnar), concern the continuing attempts of the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland to conceal information and prevent access to key evidence on grounds of national security. The lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the UK-based Reprieve and the Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights have all faced major obstructions when trying to ascertain basic facts about what has happened. However, they, and other human rights lawyers around the world, continue to seek justice, compensation and protection from further abuse for the survivors of the CIA extraordinary rendition programme. We hope that the information included in this edition will assist lawyers in achieving these goals.
Vesselina Vandova is Senior Lawyer, S e c u r i t y a n d t he R u l e o f L a w , a t INTERIGHTS.
* Priest, D., ‘CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons’, The Washington Post, 2 November 2005.