Outsourcing Torture.

House Bill HR 10 permits sending certain suspects abroad for torture? (MLP)

By greenrd
Thu Sep 30th, 2004 at 07:56:53 AM EST

Tucked away in Section 3032 and 3033 of H.R. 10, the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004, is an "anti-terrorist" provision that was never recommended by the 9/11 Commission. Indeed, it is the very opposite of a Commission recommendation - as noted in a critical press release about the bill from Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), quoted here. The bill was introduced by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL).

This provision retroactively establishes a loophole legitimising the practice of extraditing "suspected terrorists" to another country where torture is legal or unprosecuted, for the purpose of having them tortured there.



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This implies that even innocent people may be wrongly suspected of terrorism - or even cynically falsely accused of terrorism for interrogation purposes - and sent to other countries to be tortured. Indeed, there is terrifying evidence that this has already happened.
What the provision appears to do is to give the Administration legal carte blanche to do this again and again - because there is to be no judicial oversight over the regulations determining who is excluded from the protections of the UN Convention on Torture, as adopted into US law.

Of course, the exclusion of any person, innocent or not, would be controversial, even if there were judicial review.

The story broke in "the blogosphere" and does not appear to have been covered anywhere in the mainstream media - judging by Google News - at the time of writing. It was based on a press release put out by Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey.

Here is a letter which one blogger wrote to urge his Congressional rep to support an amendment to this bill, striking out this right-to-torture provision.