That is the destruction of legitimacy of any state. The disposition to act beyond the law is always a crime. It is like drugging oneself to reduce responsibility, in such a case it is an aggravant.

DSW

Nonsense. Spiriting off suspects to prisons in other countries serves more than simply torture. It gets these suspects out of circulation into countries and facilities where they don’t have the normal legal discourse. They disappear. That’s the main point of rendition, not torture. Quit being so simplistic.

In an aside, majorities in France, Britain, South Korea, and the US approve of torture in ‘rare situations’.

Here, for a change, I completely agree with Rupert. It’s especially good that these debates are occurring now, in wartime but at some distance from a major terrorist attack on US soil.

I’m also glad to see public debate in Europe regarding cooperation with covert US operations. Dealing with jihadis caught beyond one’s national boundaries — with all the complications of evidence collection and legal process — is currently an American and not European problem. European governments were understandably content to cooperate with the US when it chose to go it alone, but letting the public think pure thoughts while accomodating Americans doing the dirty work was a devil’s bargain, and now there’s political price to pay. In the long term, this should result in more sustainable arrangements, including better protections for EU citizens.

Beyond that, the US is still stuck with the akward match of current international laws to an open-ended international conflict between states and non-state actors. A more cooperative and procedural-minded administration might have used September 11 to lead in creation of a new legal framework, but now it seems that we’ll have to stagger from one bad makeshift solution to another for at least a generation. For all the discussion of murkier gray areas, I haven’t seen anyone make the apparently obvious observation that it is in principle impossible to deal with jihadis from most Arab countries captured in Afghanistan and Iraq without violating the UN Convention Against Torture — unless one prefers to hold them in legal limbo indefinitely or, alternatively, prosecute POWs from a major international conflict through domestic criminal system. These issues haven’t received anywhere near the level of discussion that I’d like to see.

Absolutely.

I’m not sure I should be surprised that we’ve arrived at a situation where Guantanamo is bound to be discussed as a more civilised model of handling the problem at hand…

And Rupert, fair enough, secret detention centers probably don’t fit the Gulag definition, regardless of their size. But *that* is hardly the point of the discussion.

Aidan, what popular wisdom am I espousing exactly?

Of course it’s disgusting that the United States Senate is even having to debate the question of whether or not torture is something that American soldiers or intelligence agents should be doing.

The article is about ‘rendition’, which I think is a perfectly valid tool. But to answer your question: It is essential to have these debates. You can’t debate something you haven’t defined. Torture can mean many things to many people. Is ‘mocking someone’s religion’ torture? I think not.

Also, the word gulag, like holocaust shouldn’t be used flippantly. Those words have specific historical meaning and should be used seriously. But instead they’re tossed around by pseudo intellectuals for the purpose of scoring cheap political points. In the end, it only demeans the original context in which these words are understood because the scope and magnitude is lost.

However, aside from this question, which is an internal German matter in any case, I believe it deeply flawed and misguided to approach this from a legalistic viewpoint. Generally there is too much lawyering today. The real question is whether someone was attacked and if so, who attacked whom? And this question should be asked not only for this affair but a number of related affairs.

Now, in my oppinion, anybody who was caught in Afghanistan has only himself to blame for wandering around in a war zone, but snatching somebody from a bus in Europe is a very different thing.
Schilly could not simply protest. This is an affair you either keep quiet about, or you hand the US ambassador his passport and tell him to get lost within 48 hours. The latter has very serious consequences, so avoiding it at considerable cost was probably wise.

Nevertheless, the EU should make clear to Macedonia whom the subsidies come from and demand a minister’s political head on a platter.
And I am astonished the US is so stupid that it didn’t offer the guy a few thousand a month for shutting up. It would have been cheaper.

Oliver, I am largely in agreement with you. However, you make one serious error (for which I, in turn, am largely responsible, as I didn’t make this point clear enough in my original post).

Though one would have hoped Schily would have very publicly called the Bush administration to account for its illegal kidnapping, 5-month detention and torture of an innocent German citizen, you are right: he was not technically obligated to make this matter public. And it’s conceivable that there are, from time to time, more or less legitimate raisons d’état that would argue against doing so.

Whether there were such legitimate reasons in this case is a question we need not reach, though, because keeping the matter out of the public eye is not the worst element of what Schily is supposed to have done. He is alleged to have kept this matter concealed, at the request of the agent of a foreign government (albeit one who is also a personal friend), from his cabinet colleagues — in particular from those to whom it would have been of most pressing relevance, the foreign minister and the Chancellor’s chief-of-staff. Were Schily still in office, there is no question but that he would have to resign over that. Whether he would be subject to potential criminal liability is something I’d have to give more thought to, but it’s not prima facie implausible.

On another point altogether: I very nearly didn’t put this post up, because I feared it would only be trollbait. But it’s an important matter, so I took the risk. And may I just say how pleasantly surprised I am at the unexpectedly low troll quotient in these comments. But of course even trolls are welcome so long as they don’t openly advocate racism or holocaust denial or what have you, and don’t cross a certain threshold of rudeness towards other commenters. But it might be better for other simply to ignore them, as they dissipate more quickly that way. Tolerandi trolles sed non nutriendi sunt.

What Macedonia does to EU citizens is yet another thing. Frankly, this cannot be allowed to go on. Heads must roll. It is entirely unacceptable that Macedonia arrests an EU national without notifying his consulate.

Secondly, if the EU thinks that it can tell the US how to organize its national security, it is mistaken. The US would be stupid if it listened. But the EU should insist that the US listen concerning the treatment of EU citizens in third countries.

And it must insist that stunts like the one the CIA pulled off in Italy are never ever repeated. It is very hard not to see that one as an act of war.