Extra ordinary rendition and the security paradigm

This paper deals with a very delicate subject – the extraordinary rendition.
The analysis starts from the rendition to justice as a technique by which a
suspected person is forcibly abducted in another State, if it is impossible to bring
this suspect to stand trial by the normal extradition procedure. In these cases, the
forcible abduction can be executed unilaterally by the agents of the forum State or
with the cooperation of agents of the State where the person is abducted. The
rendition in itself is not a judicial procedure because it lacks a judicial warrant
and, in reality, is mostly a highly covert police or military operation, with the risk
of infringing upon the State sovereignty of other States (depending on the
cooperation with that State). Recently, the rendition to justice practice was
applied in a systematic way in dealing with the prosecution of piracy in the
Somalia-Gulf of Aden area. Several defendants ended up in criminal trials in
European States without any extradition procedure at all. The rendition to justice
was widened into a rendition to secure policy and in this way the extraordinary
rendition was born. Extraordinary rendition is also a special administrative
measure, but one that fundamentally changes the meaning of rendition, as the aim
is no longer to adjudicate a person, but to keep him/her in secret detention for
interrogation. In this context, the paper observes also the way extraordinary
rendition is reflected in The Inter-American Court of Human Rights jurisprudence
and in European Court of Human Rights standards.