extraordinary rendition at Brave New Films

Headzup: The Bush Boat

2008-10-28T09:30:33Z

President Bush is asked about the report that we are still performing extraordinary rendition even though Bush vowed we were not.

Read more about it here--
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Report_US_continuing_rendition_secretly_holding_0602.html

Download daily Catch and Release Comedy™ political cartoons to your mobile phone or iPod at www.headzup.tv

Watch the video

Episode 12: The Jeppesen Airplanes (11/21/07)

2008-11-22T08:28:02Z

The CIA has a travel agent! Jeppesen Corp. of San Jose plans the logistics for torture flights. We just had to drop by and say hello.

Watch the video

Foul play? CIA connection? What else is new?

2008-10-19T01:31:17Z

Again, a quickie (work and all):

A city police chief who led an investigation into charges that Britain cooperated with secret CIA flights to transport terrorism suspects without formal proceedings has been found dead, his deputy said Tuesday.
Manchester Chief Constable Michael Todd, 50, was found dead in Snowdonia, about 240 miles northwest of London, Deputy Chief Constable Dave Whatton said. He had been missing since going out for a walk Monday during his day off. [...]
The association gave him the task of looking into accusations that Britain allowed the CIA to use the country's airports to fly terrorism suspects to other countries without any extradition hearings, a clandestine procedure known as "extraordinary rendition."

Surprise: Court gags former SAS soldier on torture claims

2008-03-18T05:04:04Z

This shouldn't be commonplace, but it is:

A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture.

Rule #1: It's never good to divulge torture secrets. You know, the kind of secrets that can sink presidents, prime ministers, other public officials? Those kinds.

Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the "illegal" tactics of US troops.

Rule #2: Never disagree with illegal tactics, especially if they're illegal U.S. tactics.

He told a press conference hosted by the Stop the War Coalition this week that individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay. He had not witnessed torture himself but added: "I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured."

Rule #3: Never get caught telling the truth. You could get renditioned yourself.

Referring to the government's admission that two US rendition flights containing terror suspects had landed at the British territory of Diego Garcia, Griffin said the use of British territory and airspace "pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place".
The Ministry of Defence said it did not comment on special forces' activities.

Rule #4: Never comment when you know it can get you in hot water. It might lead to being waterboarded. But only if nobody finds out.

H/t: CLG

We don't do torture? Oh really? This brutally tortured man begs to differ.

2008-01-12T20:45:18Z

Bush has said repeatedly that we don't torture, but this (sorry, no direct link to the article; please read more exerpts on the flip) proves him to be the liar that he so obviously is. Extraordinary rendition was just the first step of an innocent man's unspeakably harrowing experience at the hands of our oh-so-compassionate government:

It may seem bizarre for the agency to provide counseling to a prisoner while simultaneously cracking him mentally--as if revealing a humanitarian aspect to a program otherwise calibrated to exploit systematic psychological abuse. But it could also be that mental healthcare professionals were enlisted to help bring back from the edge prisoners who seemed precariously damaged, whose frayed minds were no longer as pliable for interrogation. "My understanding is that the purpose of having psychiatrists there is that if the prisoner feels better, then he would be able to talk more to the interrogators," said Bashmilah.

And here are the results our Torturer-in-Chief gets when he doesn't do torture:

Bashmilah's apparent innocence was clearly lost on officials with Jordan's General Intelligence Department. After his arrest, the Jordanians brutally beat him, peppering him with questions about al-Qaida. He was forced to jog around in a yard until he collapsed. Officers hung him upside down with a leather strap and his hands tied. They beat the soles of his feet and his sides. They threatened to electrocute him with wires. They told him they would rape his wife and mother.

It was too much. Bashmilah signed a confession multiple pages long, but he was disoriented and afraid even to read it. "I felt sure it included things I did not say," he wrote in his declaration to the court delivered Friday. "I was willing to sign a hundred sheets so long as they would end the interrogation." [...] He called his imprisonment by the CIA "almost like being inside a tomb." ... "Whenever I saw a fly in my cell, I was filled with joy," he said. "Although I would wish for it to slip from under the door so it would not be imprisoned itself." [...]
In his declaration, Bashmilah made it clear that most of the prison officials spoke English with American accents. "The interrogators also frequently referred to reports coming from Washington," he wrote.

This and so other intensely inhumane treatment drove him to suicide attempts.

It was in this facility that Bashmilah slashed his wrists, then went on his hunger strike, only to be force-fed through a tube forced down his nose.

This Yemeni man did nothing to deserve this. He was never charged by the U.S. He endured 19 months of brutality and psychological torture. This was the first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons.

Big h/t to the always generous OhDave.

Turn page to read more excerpts from the piece.

U.S. says kidnapping is legal

2008-01-12T20:39:12Z

Sorry about the light posting today. I was struggling with my new video program. But that's better than struggling with a kidnapper.

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.
A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

Well, at least they're honest about their crimes. Wait, what?

This reminds me of something though. A lit-tle something ca-a-alled....extraordinary rendition.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.
Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

Why should there be boundaries? This is America, after all! Land of the free! As long as you're not the kidnapee, that is.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Who needs habeas corpus anyway?

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.

BushCo has always been a little passive regressive.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “This law may date back to bounty hunting days, but they should sort it out if they claim to be a civilised nation.”
The US Justice Department declined to comment.

Of course they can't comment. Silly Brits. It's an ongoing investigation.

Renditions are never having to say your sorry.

2008-01-12T20:28:58Z

Here's the back story:

Maher Arar, an Ottawa telecommunications engineer, was detained by U.S. officials during a stopover flight in New York. They later took him to Syria where he says was tortured while being held for nearly a year without charges.

Are you listening, Mukasey?

So a few legislators are saying they're sorry. Good.

Members of the joint U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing in Washington offered their apologies, even though the U.S. government has not done do.

Isn't W compassionate?

Arar is still barred from entering the United States. He had to testify at the hearing via video from Ottawa.

Bill Delahunt, a Democrat, apologized to him and the Canadian people for the 'mistake' of the U.S. government.
Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican, defended the practice of extraordinary rendition but also apologized to Arar.

Rohrabacher? Go rendition yourself.

The U.S. administration has not apologized.

Bush didn't call Gore to congratulate him. Why on earth would this even enter his sadistic, vindictive little pea-brain?

Delahunt tried his best:

"Let me personally give you what our government has not: an apology," said Delahunt, D-Mass., as he opened the hearing.

Our government "has not" given us much of anything, except fond memories of real democracy. Remember that?

If Bush doesn't start World War III, we may have a shot at getting some of that back in 2009. Fingers crossed.