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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

Bringing him back the US would be extradition, not rendition. Rendition means sending him someplace away from American courts to be [interrogated harshly].

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That's not true. Rendition is the act a host country takes in yielding a subject to the country requesting extradition.

What you're referring to is the Orwellian term "extraordinary rendition" (the correct term is "kidnapping"), in which subjects are detained extrajudicially and shipped to a third party jurisdiction to be tortured. "Torture" is important to the definition of "extraordinary rendition", as getting subjects to countries where they can be tortured is the reason "extraordinary" measures have to be taken in the first place.

Serious question: is it kidnapping if US Marshals go into Mexico and grab a fugitive to bring him back to the US? Maybe it is, maybe we (generally, as a country) are okay with it under certain circumstances or for certain offenses.

If it happens as you describe, then it is definitely kidnapping.

It's kidnapping under Mexican law, but I can't think of a US law that would ban it.

Does it happen frequently? (Serious question, I don't know).

I have no idea, I just know it has happened in the past both with and without approval/consent of Mexican officials. I don't think they'd be super public about it either way. Either it happens very rarely and that's a safe way to evade capture, or it happens every day and people will stop running to Mexico.

I don't believe it is the case that US law enforcement agents can go into Mexico and arrest people. Can anyone clarify this?

Rendition just means giving something e.g. giving someone up for extradition.

"Extraordinary rendition" is some weird orwellian way of saying "we kidnapped people and took them to countries that will torture them for us"

Extradition is a well defined process subject to a defined judicial review by the countries involved.

According to the Wikipedia article on (extraordinary) rendition "in the United States, the first well-known rendition case was that of an airline hijacker abducted in Italy and brought to the U.S. for trial, authorized by President Ronald Reagan".

It seems like the Snowden case would fit the same definition.

The US would extradite him, but the Danes would render him.

So... wouldn't this be a rendition from Denmark to USA (where he would be - no doubt - interrogated harshly)?

Interrogated over what? He's publicly confessed repeatedly to what he's done. AQ subjects were tortured because the administration believed at the time they could find out about upcoming plots. Snowden has already done his business, boasted about it and fled the nation. If he ever set foot in the US he'd be very easily convicted by due process without needing to answer a single question.

I think a lot of people here just aren't aware of much of the history, or have forgotten.

An important reason for people being tortured was because of the Bush administration's torture policy described in John Yoo's "torture memos," which described a legal justification for the use of torture in early 2003 or so.

When this policy became a source of public humiliation around 2004-2005, the Bush administration began quietly and partially walking the policy back, and the CIA began destroying evidence.

It became an election issue around 2008, with Democrats successfully using the torture memos and Abu Ghraib to discredit Bush and the Republican party. The Republicans wisely chose McCain as their candidate, since he was a former POW who had been tortured and at least nominally opposed torture, but it wasn't enough to dispel the perceived taint of Abu Ghraib. This was one of the major reasons Obama was elected, and his public repudiation of the policy was one of the first major consequences of his election.

What happens if or when Snowden enters US custody depends on who is elected to which offices. The past 15 years should have taught us that the executive has a huge amount of leeway and that it can take years for the judicial branch to catch up, so that it actually matters more, rather than less, who is elected to what office. Elections determine the course of history. Make sure to vote, whether or not you are happy with the primaries.

I thought that "harsh interrogation" was a codename for torture - or at least inhumane treatment, like the one afforded to Manning.

Perhaps pour encourager les autres.

I'm sure he will get some ridiculous 2,000 year prison sentence, no need to torture him to make the point.

Permanent solitary confinement in ADX Florence (which is assuredly what Snowden and Assange will receive if they are ever in U.S. hands) IS torture.

There is no metaphor or exaggeration or hyperbole in the above sentence.

Manning has been tortured. As a member of the army I suppose there are some differences but it's not so difficult to think that the same could happen.

Manning was convicted of espionage, imprisoned, and put into solitary confinement under the legal authority of UCMJ. Unfortunately, this is all legal, backed by the popular view that sentencing should be punitive and serve as a deterrent. Think of all the people in solitary confinement who, unlike Manning, were never in the public eye.

Manning was:

imprisoned in solitary confinement, barred from exercising even in his cell, under constant surveillance, without pillows or sheets,

all this, before the trial.

http://www.salon.com/2010/12/15/manning_3/

http://www.mintpressnews.com/chelsea-manning-chronicles-her-...

I agree with you about all the other people in solitary confinement.

Manning was ... put into solitary confinement.

That's what we man by "tortured".

Though "living death" might be a better description.

A rose by any other name is still a rose, whether it's legal or not.

No, you're thinking of extradition. Rendition means sending him someplace away from American courts to be [interrogated harshly].

> Rendition means sending him someplace away from American courts to be [interrogated harshly].

I'd fully expect from the US government to lock Snowden up in Guantanamo and throw away the keys.

You would expect Obama to add prisoners to Guantanamo while he's desperately trying to close it? And you think he could just disappear an extremely visible personality and no one would be suspicious? The fact is they have him dead to rights on breaking the law and any court would easily convict him and give him at least a few if not many years in jail. He'd probably plea bargain to something face saving and be done with it.

> desperately trying

Haven't heard a peep out of him about Gitmo this decade. If this is what counts as "desperately trying", I've got to wonder what term you use for actual effort.

He's been slowly but steadily releasing people.

http://www.gtmoclock.com

You've got a lot more faith that extralegal shenanigans won't happen than I do, for sure. Snowden's leaks have shown us that the US government will do anything if it thinks it can get away with it, the law be damned.

Besides. What happened with Bradley/Chelsea Manning is all "legal", and that amounts to straight-up torture.

Snowden would not have been sent to Guantanmo because he is an American citizen. The point of Guantanmo is that the US wanted a place to keep people who weren't US citizens and wasn't on US soil.

Correct. He would be placed in permanent solitary confinement at ADX Florence in Colorado, not Guantanamo Bay.

(Guantanamo Bay, in case you weren't aware, has entered the vernacular as a metaphor, and that's how the previous commenter was using it.)

Not just that. They had all these detainees that they thought were probably terrorists, but they knew they didn't have enough evidence (or at least admissible evidence) to convict them. So, between sending them court knowing a lot of them would be acquitted or letting them go back to do whatever bad stuff they were worried would happen, they just decided to hold them in limbo. They have plenty of evidence to convict Snowden in a civilian court.

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