Consumer Law

?Extraordinary Rendition,? Torture, and a Very Busy Obama Administration

By Andy Hoffman

Assuming you didn?t decide to watch ?Lie to Me? on Fox during President Obama?s ?First 100 Days? press conference last night, you may have noticed that he was asked several times about one of the biggest, most controversial issues of the day?torture.  (He repeatedly said he was against it.)

Still, when it comes to so-called ?extraordinary rendition,? (i.e., the practice of kidnapping foreigners and flying them to other countries for interrogation and torture), Obama?s position has been somewhat less emphatic?at least with respect to one recent high profile lawsuit (here, here, here).  In fact, at the news conference last night, he stated, ?there are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can?t litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety.?

Well, there?s one such case right now in which Obama?s position doesn?t seem to holding sway.  The case involves five former ?detainees? who are suing a Boeing subsidiary over its alleged role in transporting them to foreign countries, where they were brutally interrogated/tortured.  The Bush administration argued strenuously that the suit should not be allowed to go forward, as the ?alleged torture victims could reveal national security secrets.?

A lot of people were concerned when the Obama administration whole-heartedly endorsed that argument when it took the case over.  And so, it seems, was a federal appeals court which just rejected, unanimously, the government?s position.  The court suggested that allowing the government to avoid lawsuits simply because classified information was involved ?would?perversely encourage the president to classify politically embarrassing information simply to place it beyond the reach of the judicial process.?

Full post as published by ThePopTort on April 30, 2009 (boomark / email).