Renditions and Torture: Outlawed

Renditions and Torture: Outlawed is a powerful 26 minute film that every American should watch. Go A description from the website is included below: Human rights groups and several public inquiries in Europe have found the U.S. government, with the complicity of numerous governments worldwide, to be engaged in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture. The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance. No one knows the exact number of persons affected, due to the secrecy under which the operations are carried out. Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition.

Torture and Disappearances in the 'War on Terror' corroborates these findings through the harrowing stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have suffered as a result of the U.S. government's disregard of the international legal instruments dealing with respect for fundamental rights. The film features commentary from Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael Scheuer, the chief architect of the rendition program and former head of the Osama Bin Laden unit at the CIA, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. President George W. Bush. OUTLAWED is a 27-minute WITNESS production in association with 14 production and distribution partners worldwide, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU);

Outlawed features relevant commentary from Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael Scheuer, the chief architect of the rendition program and former head of the Osama Bin Laden unit at the CIA, and Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State. Outlawed places the post-9/11 phenomenon of renditions and the “war on terrorism” in a human rights context for use on a global level in advocacy, education, and mobilization. Amnesty International; Breakthrough (US/India); the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Center for Human Rights & Global Justice at New York University School of Law; Freedom House; Human Rights First; Human Rights Watch; the International Commission of Jurists (Switzerland); Liberty (UK); the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA; Redress (UK); and Reprieve (UK). According to the statement of facts presented to the US District Court11, Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, travelled by bus from his home near Neu Ulm, Germany, to Skopje, Macedonia, in the final days of 2003. After passing through several international border crossings without incident, Mr El-Masri was detained at the Serbian-Macedonian border because of alleged irregularities with his passport. He was interrogated by Macedonian border officials, then transported to a hotel in Skopje. Subsequent to his release in May, 2004.

(Jeff Franklin Pp. 67)

Mr El-Masri was able toidentify the hotel from website photographs as the Skopski Merak, and to identify photos of the room where he was held and of a waiter who served him food. Protest songs are frequently situational, having ...