NORTH CAROLINA
STOP TORTURE
NOW
PO Box 50345
Raleigh, NC 27650
e-mail via:
contact AT ncstoptorturenow.net
(919) 834-4478
(evenings, or messages during business hours)
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FOR THE PRESS
Torture program scarred many people
Weaving a Net of Accountability Conference
Scorecard on Torture Press Conference
Transparency, Accountability and Restitution: Our Views
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Torture program scarred many people
(Reprinted from The Clayton News-Star)
New ideas about Johnston County’s involvement in torture emerged from an April 8-10 conference at Duke University.
Over the past decade, we North Carolinians have experienced war, counterterror and trauma in many forms. Our sons and daughters have fought on the frontlines in Afghanistan and Iraq, and often returned home bearing painful burdens.
Other North Carolinians have taken part in sensitive national security operations, including Special Forces deployments and “extraordinary rendition” flights. And many of us feel outraged at the now-disavowed policies of secret detention and torture.
In Johnston County, interactions over torture have often been adversarial – understandable when so much is at stake. But at the recent conference, it became apparent to us that while North Carolina has played a critical role in the implementation of torture, perhaps there is more to unite us than to divide us.
At the conference, we learned that a European investigation uncovered chilling details of a secret program based on bilateral agreements between the United States and most European nations.
After leaving their base at the Johnston County Airport or the Kinston JetPort, Aero Contractors jets would stop in Washington, D.C., to pick up CIA “snatch teams.” Around the globe, detainees were handed over to those teams in secret to be stripped, beaten, hooded, diapered, shackled, handcuffed and rectally sedated – all in the presence of Aero crews.
Aero Contractors personnel operated aircraft on “rendition circuits,” in which prisoners were secretly shuttled among pickup points, foreign jails and secret CIA secret torture facilities. Joining in a systematic coverup, Aero pilots disguised flight plans to help the CIA avoid detection.
Binyam Mohamed, a United Kingdom resident transported to Morocco by Aero Contractors for the CIA, was reportedly held in secret for 18 months and subjected to brutal beatings and slicing of the genitals and torso. He was “rendered” again by Aero Contractors pilots to the “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan, held for many months in complete darkness and kept awake for days at a time by continuous loud sounds.
After years at Guantanamo, Binyam was released without charges – and without acknowledgment or apology from our government.
Some “rendered” detainees disappeared and may have died as a result of torture. Others remain at Guantanamo indefinitely, without a trial. Those eventually released without charges have never received an apology, restitution or any support in trying to make new lives.
Although this history is appalling, the employees of Aero Contractors were not the authors of the “extraordinary rendition” program. They were the pilots, the mechanics and the crew, some of whom themselves may be affected by their involvement with torture.
It is the officials who planned, authorized and justified such unlawful conduct in our names – in contradiction to our proud history of protecting civil and human rights – who should be held accountable.
To do that, we need transparency at all levels.
There must be both justice and healing for all those scarred by extraordinary rendition, and we hope that employees at Aero Contractors can join us on this path.
We at N.C. Stop Torture Now have played our part in adversarial relations with the employees of Aero. While extraordinary rendition has caused serious damage to those who were kidnapped and tortured, as a state and a nation we are all harmed. The United States’ walk on the “dark side” of torture and secret detention has robbed us all of our most precious birthrights: the rule of law and our basic value of respect for human life.
Across our differences, what unites us is our desire to be proud of our communities and our country. We all want safety and peace for our children. We all value human life and are ready to stand up for democracy.
Together, we can acknowledge what went wrong and bring it to the light of day. We can seek out those who were harmed, learn what they need, offer apologies and begin to make amends.
–Christina Cowger, Coordinator, NC Stop Torture Now
***
Weaving a Net of Accountability: Taking on extraordinary rendition at the state and regional levels
The three-day conference detailed at Weaving a Net of Accountability, was launched by an interfaith service attended by about 40 who were led in reflections on the congregation of humanity's obligation to our brothers and sisters, and featured a keynote address by Scott Horton, a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine, author of the blog “No Comment” and an expert on international law and extraordinary rendition.
Horton told an audience of about 90, including U.S. Representative David Price (NC – Fouth District), his view of the talk's title "The Unresolved Legacy of Guantánamo" as shorthand for the nation's retreat from the rule of law and citizens' obligation to reclaim foundational values of the nation.
During Friday, April 9, a group of between between 70 and 80 was guided by a diverse and uniquely qualified group of speakers in an exploration and struggle with the challenge of framing and moblizing the reclamation project Horton described the night before. Of especial concertn was whether North Carolinians have either a special obligation or an organizational head start on seeding and nurturing such an effort from the grassroots.
On Saturday, April 10, a smaller, self-selected group worked in earnest to synthesize lessons and listening from the day before into an action plan and has charged a group to move forward on that task.
Additional details on that effort will be shared here, and youranalysis, commitment and feedback are welcome. Visit our contact page to offer these in the most constructive fashion.
Also welcome are images captured at the events. Audio and video of the conference are expected shortly and will also be shared here.
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Scorecard on Torture:
The Obama Administration's First Year
The Independent reprinted most of the Scorecard on Torture: The Obama Administration's First Year North Carolina Stop Torture Now (NCSTN) released during a February 2 press conference, where the group also announced new efforts to demand accountability for those who planned and piloted illegal flights of prisoners to secret torture facilities.
Christina Cowger, NCSTN Coordinator noted in her comments that our organization's disappointment with the current administration’s first year of actions on torture " ... in no way suggests that we’re somehow attempting to exonerate the previous administration. We are not trying to argue that current top officials are somehow mainly responsible for violations of international and national law."
"On the contrary – we are most disappointed with our current government precisely for failing to hold the previous administration accountable for barbaric and systematic use of torture," Cowger said.
The press conference followed on the heels of the Center for Constitutional Rights' announcement of their appeal of Maher Arar's complaint against former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to the U.S. Supreme Court. Arar is the survivor of a Canadian-American conspiracy to disappear him to Syrian torture chambers aboard a CIA-chartered aircraft, such as operated by Aero Contractors. Concurrent filing with the high court, the Center for Constitutional Rights called for citizens to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending the Bush administration's wrongs.
Nearly one year after President Obama announced an end to U.S. torture policy and a commitment to shutter secret detention centers run by the CIA, Harper's reporter Scott Horton revealed that Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) continues to operate a black site less than one mile from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp and may have murdered three captives there during 2006.
Guantánamo Bay is yet home to 110 captives that a Justice Department task force has cleared for release. Many of these men were sold into captivity by Afghani warlords or Pakistani informants. Some of these men and many others were disappeared with the help of Aero Contractors' flyers.
Reverend Tom Rhodes, minister of the congregation that has hosted NCSTN for more than four years, opened the press conference. Other featured speakers included Sarah Preston, Legislative Director, ACLU of North Carolina; and Chuck Fager, Director of the Quaker House, in Fayetteville near the Ft. Bragg headquarters of JSOC.
Cowger urged "North Carolinians to contact Attorney General Holder and ask that Maher Arar be issued a public apology, removed from the Terror Watch List, and receive compensation ... " from the U.S., as Canada has already provided.
Cowger also briefly revisited the history of our persistent, multifaceted, but -- so far largely fruitless -- struggle to convince elected representatives and community leaders of their responsibility to guard and promote our national security and integrity.
Accordingly, we are launching an effort to achieve accountability from the ground up.
***
NORTH CAROLINA STOP TORTURE NOW (NCSTN) is a grassroots coalition of individuals committed to ending torture by first working against U.S. sponsorship and perpetration, and most specifically, investigating and ending the practice of extraordinary rendition.
Extraordinary rendition is a sanitized phrase that disguises the kidnap, enforced disappearance, detention and torture of individuals alleged to be enemies of the United States, including those guilty of nothing other than being misidentified.
Some of these captives were or are being transferred to the custody of third nations, such as Libya, Morocco, Syria and Egypt -- based on empty promises they would not be tortured.
Others were or are being interrogated directly by the CIA, using cruel, inhumane, torturous and counter-productive techniques at black site prisons in Eastern Europe, or in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq, shielded from monitoring by human rights organizations such as the International Red Cross.
Captives have included British, Canadian and German citizens, as well as refugees and asylum seekers.
One of the private companies linked to the extraordinary rendition program is Aero Contractors, Ltd., which is headquartered at a large hangar the Johnston County Airport near Smithfield, NC.
We are particularly concerned that state and local government officials and individual citizens recognize their own complicity in the extraordinary rendition program and take prompt steps to provide restorative justice to victims and survivors, to air a full account of human rights violations, and to demand top-down accountability for the authors and perpetrators.
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Updated 23 May 2010, JMcI
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