Tony Hatfield's Retired Ramblings

Ken Clarke on "Extraordinary Rendition"

Part of Ken Clarke's speech to the Foreign Press Association on September 1st dealt with one of my own hobby horses- rendition.

"The sort of unusual measure that is not acceptable in a democratic society is that known in the United States as “extraordinary rendition”. This is a process by which people are captured by or passed to U.S. forces anywhere in the world and then taken to countries that have been heavily criticised for using torture. It appears to be designed to get round the prohibition on torture in the USA. One of the White House lawyers who drew up the justification for this policy has compared terrorists to slave traders and pirates, people who were not fighting for any country and had no legal protection.But this is not the seventeenth century; it is the twenty-first century. Some might say that what the US does, the US is responsible for. That is true but the British Government cannot evade its responsibilities in this matter. It refuses to say whether British citizens or residents have been the subject of extraordinary rendition. It will not comment on claims that British territory has been used by the US for this purpose. It does not deny having received intelligence from people who have been tortured. I never thought I would live in a society where the British Government has refused to deny that captured people may be flown out of British airports to some third country where they can be tortured. What kind of country have we become if we permit such outrages?"

And it's quite disgraceful we hear nothing from Blair.

posted by Tony @ Friday, September 02, 2005