Two courts, one in Italy and one in the United States, ruled recently on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the kidnapping of people and sending them to other countries for interrogation — and torture. The Italian court got it right. The American court got it miserably wrong.

Even though Barack Obama, the candidate, pledged to end "the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries," his FBI has been rendering kidnap victims to the U.S. The practice is still kidnapping, however; and it's still illegal. Unlucky victim No. 1 was Raymond Azar, 45, flown from Afghanistan to Alexandria, Va., not to a foreign country. The construction manager for Sima International, a Lebanese outfit that did work for the U.S. military, Azar said he was tortured by his abductors. He might just as well have been flow to Egypt under the Bushies. Interestingly, Azar was never charged as a dangerous terrorist, only with conspiracy to commit bribery for wiring $106,000 in kickbacks to a U.S. employee's bank account in hopes of getting $13 million in unpaid bills okayed. For this comparatively trivial white collar crime, Azar's lawyers said when arrested he was stripped naked, hooded, and subjected to a body cavity search. What's more, according to an article by Scott Horton, writing on "Common Dreams," Azar claims a federal agent showed Azar a photo of his wife and four children and told him to confess or else he might "never see them again." Azar confessed, and pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery.

Under fire from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that he had approved of rendition — essentially, legalized kidnapping — apparently more than once during his tenure as President Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general. Cautioning Holder that any potential investigation into the Bush administration’s torture program could result in Democrats being roped in, “Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Richard Shelby of Alabama pressed Holder on the CIA’s ‘rendition’ program that moved terrorism suspects from one country to another,” reported Domenico Montanaro with MSNBC. Note: Read more here: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/07/holder-says-he-approved-clinton-era-renditions/

Obama's Attorney General - Eric Holder - approved "extraordinary renditions" during the Clinton presidency. And so now Republicans are blackmailing Holder, saying they will focus the spotlight on his role in approving renditions if Holder pulls back the cover too far on torture under the Bush administration. This ties into Sibel Edmonds' allegations that virtually everyone in Washington is being blackmailed not to rock some boat or another. Are most members of Congress being blackmailed on torture, spying, and other issues of national security? Is the Justice Department? The White House? What a swamp. Note: Yes, and the swamp has to be drained! We can see now why Clintonites were nominated. Almost everyone would have to keep their mouths shut. Nice blackmail scheme.

A United Nations investigator urged U.S. allies from Britain to Pakistan on Tuesday to fully investigate whether they helped in secret renditions that led to the illegal torture or disappearance of terror suspects. Martin Scheinin, U.N. special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, cited "credible" reports that the United States sent suspects for interrogation at covert detention centers in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, as well as CIA-run "black sites" through at least May 2007. In an annual report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council, he urged "all relevant authorities of countries that have allegedly participated in extraordinary renditions, torture, disappearances, secret detentions or any other serious human rights violation to investigate fully any wrongful acts of intelligence agencies committed on their territory."

"All of the Obama administration's rhetoric about "change you can believe in," government transparency and democratic ideals went up in smoke Monday morning in a San Francisco federal courtroom...the new administration will be standing pat on the position taken by George Bush and his Justice Department in a case involving some of the most heinous crimes..." "[During the Bush Regime]People were torn from their homes and families by jackbooted men dressed in black and wearing masks to become "disappeared" persons, their very existence in US custody denied by Washington. Denied any protections afforded to either criminal suspects or prisoners of war, they were detained in many cases for years without charges while subjected to the most barbaric forms of torture."

"A British ‘resident’ held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as a terrorist after confessing he had visited a ‘joke’ website on how to build a nuclear weapon, it was revealed last night. Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the ‘instructions’ after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail. It was this confession that apparently convinced the CIA that they were holding a top Al Qaeda terrorist. But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the offending article – called How To Build An H-Bomb – was first published in a US satirical magazine and later placed on a series of websites. Written by Barbara Ehrenreich, the publication’s food editor, Rolling Stone journalist Peter Biskind and scientist Michio Kaku, it claims that a nuclear weapon can be made ‘using a bicycle pump’ and with liquid uranium ‘poured into a bucket and swung round’. Despite its clear satirical bent, the story led the CIA to accuse 30-year-old Mohamed, a caretaker, of plotting a dirty bomb attack, before subjecting him to its ‘extraordinary rendition programme’."

Two judges ordered the foreign secretary to hand over to Binyam Mohamed's legal team secret information that could support his case that he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco before being sent to Guantánamo Bay.Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones found that the British security service "facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer in Pakistan" in 2002. The detention was unlawful under Pakistani law, the judges said."Without that information BM [Mohamed] will not be able to put forward a defence to the very serious charges he faces, given the confessions made by him in Bagram and Guantánamo Bay in 2004," the judges ruled."It is a longstanding principle of the common law that confessions obtained under torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used in evidence in trial."

A complaint was made yesterday to the information commissioner about the government's behaviour over the use of the British island of Diego Garcia for the rendition of US prisoners. Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party group on extraordinary rendition - the secret inter-state transfer of prisoners - said he had made the complaint to discover whether the UK was in breach of its obligations under the UN convention against torture. The moves come after the Guardian yesterday highlighted human rights lawyers' claims that the United States is operating prison ships to house those arrested in its "war on terror".

The creator of the CIA's "extraordinary-rendition" program says he has always distrusted interrogation intelligence flowing from the controversial practice, given that the admissions it produced were usually "very tainted" by foreign agencies who jailed suspects at the behest of the United States.

Pilger tells the awful story of an island that, at the height of the Cold War, was seized by the British, and with the help of the American government, "swept" and "sanitized." This involved taking a population of natives and, retroactively, reclassifying them as "short-term, temporary residents" that were "returned" to the island of Mauritius, about 1,000 miles away. "

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania — It always happened at 1 a.m. In a secluded corner of this heavily guarded airfield, two snipers would creep across a rooftop and take their positions. Moments later a black minibus would arrive and wait.3 times in 2004, and twice more in 2005,a jet landed and the black bus drove out to meet it. Large, mysterious parcels were exchanged that, according to a Romanian official who says he witnessed it,looked like bundled-up terror suspects.The official, a high-ranking veteran ....

Three times in 2004, and twice more in 2005, a jet landed and the black bus drove out to meet it. Large, mysterious parcels were exchanged that, according to a Romanian official who says he witnessed it, looked like bundled-up terror suspects.

The US DOJ has asked the US District Court for the Northern District of CA to dismiss [ACLU press release] a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplanon the grounds that the case would disclose classified info regarding the CIA's extraordinary rendition program."The whole world knows about the U.S. 'extraordinary rendition' program and the govt's invocation of 'state secrets' in this case is just another cynical attempt by the administration to cover up an illegal and immoral program," said ACLU lawyer Steven Watt.

Endless renditions...Human rights groups say Kenyan authorities put dozens of terror suspects from Kenya on secret rendition flights to Ethiopia for interrogation by U.S. officials."The crack-down of so-called terrorists ... is a blanket design and a veiled, skilful and state-orchestrated machination aimed at intimidating, harassing and persecuting members of the Muslim community,"

The district attorney's office in Munich has filed international warrants with Interpol for the arrest of Lyle L., 51, and nine other CIA employees. Lyle L., also known as "Uncle Bud," a former member of the elite Green Berets combat unit, is alleged to have been part of a group of agents who kidnapped Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen, in Macedonia in January 2004 and flew him to Afghanistan via the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.

"Twenty-six American defendants, including two CIA station chiefs and an Air Force colonel, are being tried in absentia in the 2003 abduction from a Milan sidewalk of the cleric known as Abu Omar. The tactic under scrutiny in the case is called extraordinary rendition. ... Human rights officials accuse the Bush administration of using scores of extraordinary renditions to 'outsource' torture, an allegation Washington denies."

The first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened in Italy on Friday in the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terrorist suspect. The trial, which has been an irritant in the historically robust U.S.-Italy relationship and coincides with the arrival in Rome of U.S. President George W. Bush, was not expected to start in earnest, however.

Gordon Brown's government must introduce effective controls over extraordinary rendition - the practice whereby the US covertly transports detainees to places where they risk being tortured - an all-party group of MPs urges today. Britain's records on rendition are wholly inadequate, says the parliamentary rendition group chaired by Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP for Chichester.

CIA agents under extradition to Italy for their roles in the extraordinary rendition of an imam in Italy. The trial is about to commence although no American suspect is physically in attendance.