Court refuses to consider rendition case

The US Supreme Court
© AFP/Getty Images/File Brendan Hoffman

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal Monday by five former detainees claiming a flight-planning firm had helped arrange for the CIA to send them to countries where they were tortured.

The men — an Egyptian, an Italian, a Yememi, an Iraqi and an Ethiopian — first filed suit in May 2007 against a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan.

They said they had been tortured at secret prisons abroad, especially in Morocco and Egypt, as terror suspects under the Central Intelligence Agency’s post-September 11 rendition program.

In September, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed the case, agreeing with President Barack Obama’s administration that trying it could threaten “state secrets” and compromise national security.

“With today’s decision, the Supreme Court has refused once again to give justice to torture victims and to restore our nation’s reputation as a guardian of human rights and the rule of law,” said ACLU National Security Project litigation director Ben Wizner, who argued the case before the appeals court.

ACLU legal director Steven Shapiro said the ruling “will not end the debate over the government’s use of the ‘state secrets’ privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny for illegal actions carried out in the name of fighting terrorism.”

“In a nation committed to the rule of law, unlawful activity should be exposed, not hidden behind a ‘state secrets’ designation,” he added.