US court allows rendition lawsuit against CIA contractor
(Read article summary)The government says state secrets are at risk, but the 9th Circuit is allowing the case to proceed against a Boeing subsidiary that reportedly flew suspects to secret prisons.
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A federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday ruled that five men who say they were detained and tortured as part of the Bush administration's "extraordinary rendition" program can proceed with a lawsuit against a Boeing subsidiary they say was involved in their ill-treatment.
The ruling was a setback to efforts by the Bush and Obama administrations, which both supported throwing out the lawsuit on the grounds that it risked revealing state secrets.The case is shaping up to be a landmark, as it is the first lawsuit filed by former detainees in the rendition program against a private company allegedly implicated in torture and illegal detention.
That firm is Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, of San Jose, Calif., which the San Francisco Chronicle reports was identified as the CIA's "aviation services provider" in a 2007 Council of Europe report.
The controversial program centered on the practice of detaining suspected terrorists without warrants or legal proceedings and taking them to secret CIA-run prisons, or foreign countries such as Egypt or Syria, for often violent interrogations. The Chronicle reports that the Bush administration always argued it did not transfer suspects to foreign countries unless it had received assurances that torture would not be used.
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