Alleged Obama-Era Rendition Victim Accuses US of Torture, Coercion

[tekisui]

Source: Democracy Now!

A Lebanese contractor named Raymond Azar says he’s the first known victim of rendition under President Obama. Azar alleges that he was coerced into confessing to bribing a contract officer after being seized and tortured by armed federal agents in Afghanistan. We speak with attorney and legal expert Scott Horton about Azar’s case.

AMY GOODMAN: (snip)

Raymond Azar is a Lebanese construction manager who works for Sima International, a contractor employed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Azar alleges he was coerced into confessing to bribing a contract officer after being seized and tortured by armed federal agents in Afghanistan. He says he was hooded, shackled, photographed naked, strip-searched, subjected to extreme cold temperatures and sleep deprivation, and forcibly transported from Bagram, Afghanistan to the United States. A US federal agent also reportedly threatened Azar with never seeing his family again.

Upon landing in the US, Azar was formally arrested and faces charges in a federal antitrust case.

The Department of Justice refuses to call this a rendition and says the charges of torture are, quote, “hyperbolic.”

For more on this story, we are joined by legal expert Scott Horton.

More: http://i1.democracynow.org/2009/8/13/alleged_obama_era_rendition_victim_accuses

[HamdenRice]

1. Not Bush type rendition-He wasn't sent to a third country, but arrested, brought to federal court

"Upon landing in the US, Azar was formally arrested and faces charges in a federal antitrust case."

I thought everyone wanted people to get habeas corpus rights and to be formally charged in federal court. This is exactly what this guy got.

Sorry, but this is dumb and hyperbolic. If you think this is rendition, then basically, you are saying the federal government doesn't have the right to arrest people and bring them to court for criminal prosecution.

This isn't "extraordinary rendition" of the Bush era, but standard rendition of an accused criminal to criminal court -- which has always been legal and ordinary procedure.

Only a dedicated Obama hater, blinded to the facts, could characterize this as being anything like Bush era rendition.

[tekisui]

2. And, what is your apologist angle on the torture charge?

You seem to have gotten hung up on the rendition. When Obama came in and was cleaning up the bush mess abuses, I know that he reserved the right to transport prisoners to be charged. That is legal and has been done for years. I don't see this as extraordinary rendition.

What I am interested in is whether or not he was tortured, as he claims.

[HamdenRice]

8. Did you read the transcript you cited? How does a routine state prison inmate get processed?

If you are saying that correctional authorities across the spectrum are unnecessarily abusive, and should be reformed, I would agree.

But nothing that happened to this guy was any different from what happens every day in almost every correctional facility in the country: handcuffs, body search, exchange of street clothes for prison clothes -- all of which generally takes a long time and keeps a person up over night. His "sleep deprivation" lasted a day and a half. That's routine for correctional facility intake.

Are you saying that handcuffing of accused prisoners is now to be considered torture? Or body searches?

The only thing that isn't routine is hooding, but that hardly constitutes torture.

This isn't "apologetics." It's cutting through bullshit allegations of torture that by DN's own transcript simply didn't happen.

[tekisui]

10. Photographing him naked and threatening him with a photo of

his family? Is all that normal, too?

[HamdenRice]

11. Verbal abuse is not torture and you cheapen the legitimate campaign against torture by ...

calling this torture. Were the arresting FBI agents possible assholes? Probably. What few law enforcement officials aren't abusive assholes?

But what happened wasn't torture. Hurting people or psychological abuse is torture.

On edit: Even Horton says this isn't torture:

"You know, whether the judge says this is torture or not—unlikely he’ll go there, but the judge may very well conclude that this was unacceptable coercion to use in connection with extraction of a confession. So I’d be surprised if that confession stands up."

Horton is concerned with coerced confession, something that law enforcement does too much of. But because they guy is going before a federal judge, there's a possibility of getting the confession suppressed.

[tekisui]

12. Point taken on the law enforement officials

being assholes. I would like to see our government not even give an opening to allegations of torture or coercion. With our history of the last administration, we do our image no favors by using a heavy hand. Even if it does not amount to torture. I would still like to see his claims taken seriously, and maybe they have been.

[HamdenRice]

13. I edited the post after you read it. Please see addition re Horton nt

[tekisui]

14. Good.

:thumbsup:

[Obamanaut]

3. This looks to be one of those "depends on what the definition of

is is" questions. Was the guy legally arrested and extradited, or was he snatched up, hooded, shackled, and tossed onto a plane and then arrested someplace else? If the description of how he came to be in the US is accurate, then something ain't quite right.

One can smash up turnips all day, put gravy all over 'em, but they still won't be mashed potatoes.



"Persons suspected of terrorist activity may be transferred from one State (i.e., country) for arrest, detention, and/or interrogation. Commonly, this is done through extradition, by which one State surrenders a person within its jurisdiction to a requesting State via a formal legal process, typically established by treaty. Far less often, such transfers are effectuated through a process known as extraordinary rendition or irregular rendition. These terms have often been used to refer to the extrajudicial transfer of a person from one State to another." --Michael John Garcia, Legislative Attorney, American Law, Library of Congress

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Extraordinary_rendition

[tekisui]

4. Even if the arrest and the extradition were legal, the claims of

torture are troubling. And, the DoJ calling the charges 'hyperbolic' is VERY troubling. They didn't deny that some form of coercion or abuse took place, only that they were exaggerated. I don't know about everyone else, but even a little torture is far too much.

[Obamanaut]

5. I agree. Calling the charges 'hyperbolic' suggests to me that there

is at least a grain of truth there.

[HamdenRice]

9. He was arrested on a US air base in Afghanistan, where US has jurisdiction

By your definition, it seems, the FBI would not be able to arrest a Blackwater mercenary at Bagram for crimes either.

The US has a unique legal status on its own bases in Afghanistan.

[Obamanaut]

15. Actually, the definition was not mine, and there is a link provided.

Huffington Post has a much longer article re this event http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/11/target-of-obama-era-rendi_n_256499.html and it appears that the 'suspect' was snatched up and carried to the airbase in Kabul, from which he was transported by Gulfstream type aircraft.

I have raccoons in my yard from time to time. They leave droppings (body waste, excrement, poop.) If a member of this administration, or anyone else for that matter, ever says that 'raccoon shit is blue', well, it isn't - and you heard it here first.

[alc]

6. depends on definitions and what actually happened

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58301-2005Apr16.html says

"rendition": the transfer of suspected terrorists from one country to another without formal legal proceedings

If he was taken from another country without following the legal process in that country, then it was rendition by this definition. If there wasn't torture involoved then it wasn't Bush era rendition, but I'm still against extending our police functions into other countries without following their laws. (I don't know what happened, so you may be correct.)

[tekisui]

7. And, what about the torture? People seem to get hung up on the

definition of rendition, when the torture charge is much worse, IMO.