Extraordinary Renditions - A Deflating Insight

Yesterday, the US Department of State, announced that the United States were not inclined to follow any request from Italy to extradite CIA agents [press briefing]. With this statements the State Department reacts to the indictment of 26 US (and 5 Italian) intelligence agents by an Italian judge earlier this month for their alleged participation in the 2003 abduction and extraordinary rendition of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, an Egyptian cleric and alleged terror suspect. The trial is set to begin in Italy on June 8, 2007. If the US continues to refuse to extradite the agents, the trial may still take place in absentia. The impact of such a trial, however, is questionable. What should happen if those agents are found guilty by an Italian judge?

In a similar case, involving a German citizen who was allegedly abducted by the CIA and held in a secret prison in Afghanistan, the CIA acknowledged having been authorized by presidential order to detain and interrogate terror suspects overseas. Yet, will the US president be held accountable? And the European state officials who, according to a report by the European parliament [info], "have been relinquishing control over their airspace and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being used for illegal transportation of detainees"?

What remains is a deflating insight: hypocrisy does not halt before human rights. Western democracies may be publicly endorsing civil values and human rights, but offstage they still resort to torture. Individual rights, then, are left out dry.