Extraordinary Rendition—Foreign Government Acquiescence

The lawyer representing six Guantanamo Bay prisoners has addressed a European Parliament committee, telling the committee that his clients were “extradited” from Bosnia on a plane that took off from Germany and also stopped in Turkey, picking up other detainees on along the way.^[1] “Extradited” is not the appropriate word in this situation, because there is no evidence or suggestion that any of the individuals who ended up in Guantanamo Bay had any sort of judicial process. The six individuals in question, Alegerians—four of whom had Bosnian citizenship, were arrested in October 2001, and in a “well-documented case, Bosnian authorities handed them over to U.S. authorities in a secret late-night operation in 2002, just a few hours before the country’s human rights court was to order their release for lack of evidence.”^[2]

What Stephen Oleksey argued before the committee—that, for example, Bosnian authorities are complicit in the rendition because they were afraid that US “assistance to the Balkan country would otherwise be suspended” if they did not arrest the individuals^[3]—has a strong ring of truth. Clear on the other side of the world, in Bangladesh, the US’s new ambassador—Patricia A. Butenis—has told that country that the “United States will provide assistance to Bangladesh to fight terrorism and hold free and fair national elections.”^[4] This is due, in part, to the arrest of “two Islamist militants blamed for a spate of bombings in Bangladesh last year,” and it probably can also be attributed to the alleged rendition of Mr. Sadequee, which we discussed yesterday.

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[1] Jan Silva, Lawyer Says Plane Transferring Algerian Suspects to Guantanamo Originated in Germany, Associated Press (via Free New Mexican), Apr. 25, 2006.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Washington to Help Dhaka Fight Terrorism, Daily Times (Pakistan), Apr. 25, 2006.