Document Type
Article
Publication Title
New York City Law Review
Abstract
Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush gave the CIA authorization to set up a secret program aimed at taking terrorism suspects “off the streets.” The resulting extraordinary rendition and secret detention program (“the Program”) reportedly involves the covert approval of “kill, capture or detain” (“K-C-D”) orders for specific individuals. As the name implies, such K-C-D orders purport to allow U.S. agents—secretly and without warning to those targeted—to apprehend, imprison, and even target for death those individuals who are determined to be eligible for the Program. What this has meant in practice is that certain individuals are apprehended and transferred to the custody of foreign governments for interrogation, others are apprehended and sent to secret prisons—so-called CIA “black sites,” and others may have been summarily killed. In contrast with the government’s attempts to keep secret certain facts about the Program, the United States has not been quiet about its legal justifications. Indeed, the U.S. government has actively made a series of legal arguments aimed at justifying the Program. Although those who defend the Program do not explicitly support the use of informal transfer due to a risk of torture, prolonged incommunicado detention, or targeted killings, defenders of the Program imply that it is legal by pointing to what they claim are lacunae in the relevant legal frameworks. The administration suggests that where lacunae are found, prohibitions give way to permission; territories outside the United States are conceptualized as locations where the United States may act as it pleases, informal promises between countries replace the absolute prohibition of certain transfers, and the war paradigm is used to deprive individuals of the protection of the law. I will not attempt to explore all of these arguments in my brief remarks today. Instead, I will focus my comments on the very significant contributions that the U.N. Committee Against Torture’s General Comment 2 makes to closing the loopholes that the United States has tried to claim and exploit. I will focus on the two most well-known elements of the Program: extraordinary rendition and secret detention. Targeted killings will be left for another day.
First Page
281
Volume
11
Publication Date
2008
Recommended Citation
Margaret L. Satterthwaite,
De-Torturing the Logic: the Contribution of CAT General Comment 2 to the Debate over Extraordinary Rendition,
11
New York City Law Review
281
(2008).
Available at:
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-articles/1004
