Toward a North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture
Abstract
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the US has been fighting a global “War on
Terror.” The military action is not a “war” in the traditional sense; its general
objective is to eradicate the Al Qaeda terrorist network and secure Afghanistan and
Iraq. One way the US has handled national security concerns brought on by the global
War on Terror is through extraordinary rendition. Extraordinary rendition is “the
practice of sending a foreign criminal or terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated
in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners.”
The CIA contracts with a number of civilian corporations to transport detainees. Aero
Contractors, a Delaware corporation with its principal office in Smithfield, North
Carolina, has provided logistical support for the CIA. Aero Contractors is an aviation
company that operated two planes—tail numbers N313P and N379P—that a number of authors
allege carried detainees to CIA detention facilities abroad, including Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, and Kabul, Afghanistan. Many flights began and ended in either Smithfield
or Kinston, NC. A number of detainees, including Binyam Mohamed, Bisher Al-Rawi, Abou
El-Kassim Britel, and Khaled El-Masri, have claimed they were flown by Aero Contractors
and subsequently tortured.
NC Stop Torture Now is a grassroots coalition of individuals interested in investigating
the role of North Carolina businesses in the War on Terror. State and national efforts
to provide accountability for torture have been ineffective, and detainees have been
unsuccessful in bringing lawsuits against Aero Contractors and other defendants. NC
Stop Torture Now wants to create a Commission of Inquiry to investigate concerns that
Aero Contractors violated international prohibitions against torture and extraordinary
rendition. This Masters Project evaluates models for a Commission of Inquiry.
Type
Master's projectDepartment
The Sanford School of Public PolicyPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3398Citation
Whiteman, Allison L. (2011). Toward a North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3398.More Info
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