CIA Authorized to Conduct Extraordinary Rendition - Kidnapping Suspects for Torture Abroad

Following the September 11 attacks, President Bush authorizes the CIA to conduct “extraordinary rendition”—the extrajudicial kidnapping and transfer of terrorism suspects to foreign countries for detention and interrogation, often involving torture. CIA Director George Tenet and Counterterrorism Chief Cofer Black implement a global kidnapping program that will ultimately involve at least 54 countries and result in at least 136 individuals being extraordinarily rendered or secretly detained. The program operates entirely outside legal process, denying victims any access to courts, lawyers, or due process protections, and deliberately transfers suspects to countries known to practice torture.

The rendition program expands dramatically from a limited pre-9/11 practice focused on transferring wanted terrorists to face justice in their home countries. Under the new authorization, the CIA can abduct individuals anywhere in the world based on suspicion alone, without charges, evidence, or judicial oversight. Victims are typically grabbed by masked agents, hooded, stripped, subjected to invasive searches, dressed in adult diapers, shackled, and flown on unmarked CIA planes to secret prisons or foreign intelligence services in countries including Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia—nations with documented records of torture.

The CIA conducts at least 1,245 rendition flights between 2001 and 2006, many to destinations where torture is routine. The program uses a fleet of aircraft operated by shell companies including Aero Contractors and Premier Executive Transport Services, with frequent stops at airports in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Afghanistan, Jordan, Morocco, and other countries hosting CIA black sites. Flight logs and aircraft tail numbers later documented by investigative journalists and human rights organizations reveal the scope of the kidnapping network. At least 54 governments participate by providing intelligence, hosting black sites, allowing aircraft to use their airspace or airports, or accepting rendered detainees.

Many rendered individuals are subjected to torture in foreign custody. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, is rendered to Syria where he is imprisoned in a grave-like cell and tortured for nearly a year before Canada secures his release and a subsequent inquiry concludes he had no terrorist connections. Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen, is kidnapped in Macedonia and rendered to Afghanistan where he is held for months, beaten, and drugged before the CIA realizes he was misidentified and releases him on a remote road. Abu Omar, an Egyptian imam, is abducted from a Milan street in broad daylight by CIA agents working with Italian intelligence and rendered to Egypt where he is tortured for years. Italian courts later convict 23 Americans in absentia for the kidnapping.

The rendition program violates multiple international treaties including the UN Convention Against Torture, which prohibits transferring individuals to countries where they face torture. It also violates domestic laws against kidnapping, assault, and unlawful detention. Yet no U.S. officials face prosecution. Victims who attempt to sue in U.S. courts have their cases dismissed based on “state secrets privilege”—the government’s claim that litigation would expose classified information. The Obama administration continues using the state secrets doctrine to shield the rendition program from judicial scrutiny, while formally ending CIA black sites but not ending extraordinary rendition itself. The program exemplifies how the “war on terror” normalized practices—kidnapping, torture, indefinite detention without trial—that violate core human rights principles and amount to systematic war crimes.