Torture through rendition in Europe: A past that will not pass away

• Author: Agustín José Menéndez
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• Date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12286

EDITORIAL

Torture through rendition in Europe: A past that

will not pass away

But then I went off in a different direction for, at a certain point, the story began to unroll in an entirely

imaginary country; a country where ideas no longer circulate, where principles—still proclaimed, still

acclaimed—are made a daily mockery, where ideologies are reduced to policies in name only, in a party‐

politics game in which only power for the sake of power counts. I repeat: an imaginary country.

Leonardo Sciascia, Equal Danger, translation by Adrienne Foulke

The European Court of Human Rights (hereafter, ECtHR) has recently produced two fundamental rulings in two cases

concerning the spider web woven across the globe by the CIA to move alleged terrorists to places where they could

be the object of torture and cruel and inhumane treatment with impunity. In Al Nashiri v. Romania

1

and Abu

Zoubaydah v. Lithuania,

2

the Court established that the plaintiffs had been illegally detained and tortured in the

territory of two Member States of the European Union, and that Romania and Lithuania were directly responsible

for the violation of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.

These are not the first instances in which the Strasbourg Court has been confronted with the so‐called “war on

terror”. In 2013, the ECHR condemned Macedonia for a similar set of facts,

3

while in 2014 the condemned state was

Poland (twice).

4

Previous inquiries by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

5

and by the European

Parliament

6

were partially relied upon by the ECtHR when establishing the facts in all five cases.

7

The gravity of

the breaches of fundamental rights remains in striking contrast with the far and far between institutional initiatives,

at both the national and the supranational level, to throw light on what constitutes a systematic and frontalattack on

the rule of law. It will suffice to consider the Italian case. On February 17th, 2003, Milan's Imam, Abu Omar, was

1

Al Nashiri v. Romania, 31 May 2018, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2018:0531JUD003323412.

2

Abu Zubaydah v. Lithuania, 31 May 2018, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2018:0531JUD004645411.

3

Application 39630/09, El Masri v. Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 13 December 2012, available at https://tinyurl.com/

yd2ngnzk.

4

Application 28761/11, Al Nashiri v. Poland, 24 July 2014, available at https://tinyurl.com/y8h3g6o9; Application 7511/13, Abu

Zubaydah v. Poland, 24 July 2014, available at https://tinyurl.com/yd2zshen.

5

Cf. ‘Alleged Secret Detentions and Unlawful Inter‐State Transfers of Detainees Involving Council of Europe Member States’, Doc

10957, 12 June 2006, available at https://tinyurl.com/y9chx643; ‘Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees Involving

Council of Europe Member States: Second Report’, Doc. 11302 rev., 11 June 2007, available at https://tinyurl.com/ybffzsdf and

(pdf) at https://tinyurl.com/yd5xg7y9; ‘Abuse of State Secrecy and National Security: Obstacles to Parliamentary and Judicial Scru-

tiny of Human Rights Violations’, Doc 12714, 16 September 2011, https://tinyurl.com/y9xjj8q2.

6

‘Report on the Alleged Use of European Countries by the CIA for the Transportation and Illegal Detention of Prisoners’,30 January

2007, available at https://tinyurl.com/ycxgb6gm. See also C. Fava, Quei Bravi Ragazzi (Sperling and Kupfer, 2006).

7

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, ‘Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Pro-

gram’,13 December 2012, availableat https://tinyurl.com/y8363mx5; see also Open Society, ‘Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Deten-

tion and Extraordinary Rendition’, 2013, available at https://tinyurl.com/qgtdo2b.

DOI: 10.1111/eulj.12286

118 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Eur Law J. 2018;24:118–123.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/eulj