Accomplices in Torture
Hentoff, Nat
Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff Accomplices in Torture On December 6, the American Civil Liberties Union filed the first lawsuit directed at former CIA director George Tenet for crimes against...
...A nonviolent direct-action protester during the Vietnam War, she was one of the leaders of the first civil disobedience action against that war near City Hall in New York...
...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said the group took the case to expose the "culture of impunity" among the Bush Administration's violators of human rights...
...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive...
...Patrick O'Neill, who was involved in the earlier demonstration at Aero, told me he runs the Father Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker House in Garner, North Carolina...
...We are not in the mode of driving out business,' he said...
...Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff Accomplices in Torture On December 6, the American Civil Liberties Union filed the first lawsuit directed at former CIA director George Tenet for crimes against international and American law in the course of an "extraordinary rendition...
...Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker movement...
...El-Masri would be subjected to prolonged arbitrary detention, torture, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" in violation of, among other laws, the United Nations Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States in 1994...
...To show that citizen protest against the lawlessness of the commander in chief is rising, the Durham, North Carolina, Independent Weekly covered November protests and arrests at the Johnson County-based Aero Contractors "that provides pilots for and maintains two corporate jets the CIA has used for extraordinary renditions.'" Meanwhile, the North Carolina Smithfield Herald has reported on another citizens' protest at Aero Contractors...
...Premier Executive Transports, Inc...
...Keeler and Tate Management LLC...
...These are the corporations that supplied the airplanes to render El-Masri to his cell while the President and Condoleezza Rice kept assuring the world that the United States does not torture and does not send suspects to other countries to be tortured...
...When it turned out the CIA had kidnapped the wrong man and El-Masri was released, he said he had "bad feelings" about the United States: "I think it's just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanely and less than that, and with no rights and no laws...
...Unlike Aero, the fourteen arrested protesters await their court date...
...Standing on a road near the airport, the more than fifty adults and children held signs that said in red: "Torture Flights Here," and "Torture Is Terrorism...
...Aero Contractors Limited...
...These companies "are liable for the torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of El-Masri, the suit claims...
...I was among the foot soldiers there, and I am glad the spirit of Dorothy Day still nourishes the Bill of Rights...
...During this particular extraordinary rendition, German citizen Khaled El-Masri was abducted and flown to Afghanistan, where he was tortured...
...This is the first lawsuit to name these corporations as American accomplices in terror...
...The lawsuit says these corporations, and others involved with them in the CIA's kidnapping ring, "knew or reasonably should have known that Mr...
...The lawsuit is titled Khaled El-Masri v. George Tenet...
...The story of that patriotic demonstration by reporter Monica Chen noted that Johnson County Manager Rick Hester "said the demonstrators had the right to protest but that the county was unlikely to take any action against Aero Contractors...
Vol. 70 • February 2006 • No. 2
