Rendition, or Outsourcing Torture?
by William Fisher

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a major advocacy group, has filed the first challenge to "rendition," known by critics as "outsourcing torture," a practice used by U.S. intelligence agencies to deliver detainees to prisons in countries known to practice abuse.

"Torture is against the law in the United States," said Ron Daniels, CCRs' executive director. "The (George W.) Bush administration should not be attempting to avoid the laws of this country by sending people to be tortured overseas where other countries will do their dirty work out of the public eye. This is a barbaric practice with no place in the 21st century."
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Introducing the bill last week, Rep. Markey said, "Extraordinary rendition is wrong because it violates international treaties that the United States has signed and ratified, including most notably Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits sending a person to another state "where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

Torture, Markey said, "is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people."

Full story here.