Lawyers say US "renditions" on shaky legal ground

[Judi Lynn]

Lawyers say US "renditions" on shaky legal ground
Mon Dec 5, 2005 4:01 PM ET

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
BERLIN (Reuters) - Secret U.S. transfers of terrorist suspects are open to challenge under several statutes of international law, despite Washington's most robust defense yet of their legality, human rights lawyers said on Monday.
(snip)

Human rights lawyers said some of the cases which have come to light amounted to "disappearing people", a practice recognized as illegal for decades since its widespread use by Latin American governments in the 1970s.

"If we're actually taking people, abducting them and then placing them in incommunicado detention, which appears to be the case, we would be actually guilty then of a disappearance under international law, in addition to a rendition," said Meg Satterthwaite of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

She pointed to Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which outlaws arbitrary arrest or detention and says an arrested person has the right to be told why he or she is being held and brought before a judge.

Gabor Rona, international legal director of advocacy group Human Rights First, said: "If people are simply being spirited off the streets ... and secretly being transferred into detention from one state to another, and have no opportunity to contest the legality of that in a court, then that is very obviously in violation of international law and most domestic law regimes."
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http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-12-05T210124Z_01_RID575654_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-RICE-LAW.xml&archived=False

[soothsayer]

1. Thank God someone is saying this out loud.

[HereSince1628]

2. But HOW do we bring this to the International Court?

Do we submit a petition with a couple hundred thousand names?

It seems to me the ICC is about trying "failed" governments and failed leaders. So long as they are in power these terrible tyrants seem to be granted sovereign immunity.

[MrPrax]

3. Big Deal...

Can hardly wait for Obvious V. United States to come up at the Hague...

Jim Crow laws were on 'shaky legal ground' as well, but for a century, criticism of them were simply taken as good legal advice and the law was simply enhanced to cover the 'loopholes', so the intent of such laws was perserved.

So the US is not a good neighbour...oh gosh, didn't know

[Briar]

4. The British Government

seems to see nothing wrong with them.