Right to Secrecy Trumps Human Rights?

World Can’t Wait Asks, “Why Should the U.S. Government’s Right to Secrecy Trump the Right of People Not to be Tortured?

Today, five men who were flown in CIA “extraordinary rendition” and subsequently tortured by third countries are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate the case of Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan Inc.  In 2008, the Bush administration convinced U.S. District Judge James Ware to throw out the case, on the basis that making the information in the lawsuit public would harm U.S. national security.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have direct testimony of torture from the five who were transported in CIA sponsored flights by Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing, and testimony to show that employees of Jeppesen knew they were planning flights in what has become known infamously as the “Torture Taxi.” Binyam Mohamed, says he was seized by the U.S. in Pakistan and tortured before being flown to Morocco and further tortured. He is now imprisoned at the U.S. interrogation camp in Guantanamo. 

In a related case brought by Mohamed, the High Court in Great Britain refused to release a seven paragraph summary of evidence, because it said the U.S. had threatened to stop sharing intelligence information with Britain if it did so. The court wrote on February 5, however, that “There was an arguable case disclosed by the documents that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment had been inflicted on [Binyam Mohamed],” and that such treatment could be prosecuted as a war crime.”