US Rejects Race Link to Rendition
Associated Press
GENEVA (AP) -- The United States on Friday rejected any link between racial discrimination and the U.S. practice of sending terrorism suspects to countries where they may be tortured.
''Anything that would be done in this area would not be done on the basis of racial discrimination,'' Robert Harris, assistant legal adviser with the Department of State, told a U.N. panel on racism.
The independent experts on the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racism told Harris and other members of the U.S. delegation that they had received claims that American authorities were being racist in the way they are conducting the so-called war on terror.
Countries ''should ensure that non-citizens detained or arrested in the fight against terrorism are properly protected by domestic law that complies with international human rights,'' said Morten Kjaerum, a Danish member of the panel.
''It seems there is a problem in relation to those who are being involved in the rendition program,'' said Kjaerum. He referred to ''extraordinary rendition'' the expression used by the U.S. for such transport of terror suspects.
''The moment the U.S. authorities take into custody a person wherever in the world, you have the responsibility for this person,'' he added.
The U.N. panel on the elimination of racial discrimination told the U.S. delegation that it was concerned over the CIA's rendition flights.
The United States was taking its turn before the 18 independent and unpaid experts, who periodically review the performance of countries that have signed the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The Bush administration acknowledged on Thursday that it used British territory to transport suspected terrorists on secret rendition flights despite repeated earlier assurances that that had not happened.
Under the rendition program, which became known in 2005 with the revelation that the CIA had operated secret prisons to interrogate prisoners, suspects are transported from one country to another, usually in secrecy, without the benefit of open legal proceedings.
Harris said the flights fall outside the scope of the treaty. He told the panel that the United States had discussed the problem exhaustively when it appeared before the U.N. committee against torture and another U.N. panel in 2006.
''It does seem that those issues are more squarely within other ... areas of concern, including the law of war,'' Harris said.
U.S. officials have acknowledged flying up to 150 of the most serious suspected terrorists from one country to another, but said they receive ''diplomatic assurances'' from authorities of the other countries that they would not use torture on the detainees they received.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a New York-based rights group, said the U.S. response Friday was misleading.
ACLU representative Jamil Dakwar told reporters that everyone held by the U.S. at the Guantanamo Bay detention center who had been flown to other countries where they were tortured were non-citizen Muslims.
''Clearly this is an issue for the committee,'' Dakwar said.
The U.N. panel discussed a broad range of other questions with the U.S. delegation, including police brutality against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001, and the detention of illegal immigrants.
The experts based many of their questions on reports submitted by 120 representatives of U.S. human rights organizations who came to Geneva for the hearings.
Warren W. Tichenor, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the discussions had been ''collegial and extremely stimulating,'' and he was pleased to see a high number of U.S. rights groups attending the meeting.