"Extraordinary Rendition: A Study of the ‘Gaps’ in the
International Legal Framework"
Obligations, Fault Lines and Hyper Legalism

Abstract

Following 9/11, the prevention and pre-emption of acts of terrorism has become a priority at domestic and international level. The immediate legislative and political responses of countries such as the US and the UK are illustrative of the preference for more expansive national security policies over effective protection of individual human rights and civil liberties. In this context, national security has become much more strongly associated with pre-empting and preventing acts of terrorism. Expansive counter-terrorism programmes such as the high value detainee programme including extraordinary rendition were developed in order to facilitate this push for pre-emption and prevention.
Extraordinary rendition in its post 9/11 construct has become a euphemism for the irregular transfer of individuals across borders for the purposes of their incommunicado detention and enhanced interrogation in conditions that constitute multiple violations of human rights, including the right to be free from torture. It is, thus, a complex phenomenon, comprising of grave and multiple violations of international obligations, and severely challenging the perception that international human rights law has the capacity to effectively protect individual rights and particularly to uphold the absolute, jus cogens character of the prohibition against torture.
However, while certain elements of the international and human rights frameworks may have lend themselves to hyper legalistic exploitation for the purposes of the ‘War on Terror’, human rights adjudicatory bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have tried to resist the challenge posed by expansive counter-terrorism practices and have shown the strength within the human rights framework.