Italian Judge Convicts 23 Americans in CIA Renditions

What enemy has the US ever protected us from? If you're our guardian, don't bother.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - The title above is the same as that of an Associated Press story that appeared in the Globe and Mail on November 4, 2009. The presentation of the basic facts is straightforward. The first paragraph reads:

“An Italian judge on Wednesday convicted 23 Americans in absentia of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street, in a landmark case involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in the war on terrorism.”

When I got to the story late Wednesday, there were 187 comments attached. I’ve gone through all of them and most of them are reprinted below. I would guess that the majority of posters are Canadian, but clearly there are some Americans putting in their two cents worth. I’ve taken out only the irrelevant posts. For example, one poster wrote: “Cool”. No idea what he was referring to.

The comments are virtually 100% non-supportive of America and its policies. The only redeeming feature for me was that one of the American posters referred to Canadians as “Canucknuckleheads”. Very creative.

Because of the nature of a comments section, there is no way to know if this is representative in any way of Canadians, or even of Globe readers.

Without CIA covert ops the US military-industrial complex wouldn't be as profitable. Laws, no, the CIA doesn't follow laws, it's bad for weapons sale profits.

Bush, however, went crazy and with the USA deeming itself outside the World Court and not subject to any laws but its own, nothing will be corrected.

Americans need to regain their sense of law and justice. Snatching people away in the night without trial and subjecting them to torture is anti-constitutional. The US constitution is not a list of suggestions. It is the basis of American society and those who break it are the terrorists and criminals. All who violate the Bill of Rights and Constitution must be held accountable for their crimes and be punished. No excuses.

Where would I be without the US . . . like to think that I'd be sitting on a beach somewhere, in the Province of Florida, one of the 62 Provinces constituting the Dominion of North America . . . When are you guys going to turn from your wicked rebellion anyway? You see where its taking you.

It’s about time the world's largest rogue state was held to account for its criminal actions.

I don't know what everyone is so worked up about. The Bible doesn't say "You shall not kidnap." or "You shall not aid and abet torture." The Bible says that "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." So as long as these CIA operatives were not coveting their neighbour's wife, ox or slaves, they are A-OK with me.

What a strange world we live in. We have hundreds of men serving time in Gitmo with no charges, no evidence, no chance at trials and devoid of human rights AND we have men that have been convicted of crimes after a trial that included evidence and was consistent with human rights that will never see the inside of a jail...

It's a small step in the direction of justice and the rule of law. But as can often happen, perhaps this little 'leak' will be the start of a flood of legal actions against Americans who violated the law and caused great suffering to so many people.

Those responsible for the Madness of the past eight years, which all-too-closely mirrored horrors of the past, cannot be allowed to escape Justice, lest future fanatics are emboldened by them.

Maybe the USA should make a complaint to the International Court of Justice. WAIT, I forgot, the US does not accept the Court's compulsory jurisdiction. Something to do with prosecuting Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan, Bush & Bush, and others as war criminals. They just prosecute the other side's bad guys.

Italian courts convict CIA operatives; ok, so that's impressive. But they cannot touch Berlusconi!!! Amazing.

It’s ok with me if the USA withdraws all and I mean all military agreements with all of Europe. Let the crusades begin, hope Italians and Germans and French et al can quickly learn Arabic and praise the Koran, they'll need it within the year!

Any American that supports rendition has seriously forgotten what it is Americans are supposed to be fighting for. Liberty and Justice for all. That was not meant to preclude the rest of the world. It was meant to be a utopian ideology that would serve as the great backdrop for freedom, democracy, and yes even capitalism.

You cannot simply kidnap people you don't like from sovereign countries. It’s extreme, dictatorial, and childish.

Although the US will not likely extradite its CIA officers to Italy, they are pretty much barred from travelling to any countries that have extradition treaties with Italy, including the EU countries, for life. They may still travel to Canada, as we will do whatever the US tell us to do, or not do.

Americans extradite and imprison Marc Emery for selling seeds but are not held accountable for serious human rights and legal violations that occurred when they kidnapped and tortured a Canadian. [Mahar Arar]

The worse off the US gets financially (starting now with commercial real estate) & Canada develops new trading partners the easier it will be to call the US on a lot of its BS and start acting Canadian again. I expect we will pull out of the Middle East sooner, be more liberal with drug laws, etc. Or am I being too optimistic?

You Yanks been doing such an awesome job with the world these past couple of decades. To sum up: financial chaos, political and international uncertainty, failed states. Did I miss something? I think, as well, that you might want to ask the contemporary citizen of some of the post-imperial states what they think about that before you make such a hasty judgment. Don't have to ask the citizens of Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Ghana or Somaliland. They're pretty up front that they'd take the Queen back if that were seriously on offer.

The problem with that is that without some people willing to do the dirty work, our high-minded values would lose, and be replaced by a version of Sharia law that's a hundred times nastier than the few abuses the CIA has resorted to.

I'd rather see a liberal democracy which operates on the normal protections for the accused, 99% of the time, than see the terrorists operate more or less unhindered. Respecting all the rules isn't a good strategy for opposing those who follow no rules at all.

Iraq was a Class A mandate, assigned to the British following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was effectively independent from 1922, and almost absolutely from 1933. The British exercised influence thereafter, but didn't really 'rule'. Iraq really only became trouble after 1956 (the coup was ‘58), when the Americans acted decisively at the time of the Suez Crisis to oust the Brits from the region. As problem, it’s as 'All American' as extraordinary rendition. The Israel/Palestine fiasco is another US gift to the world. So it goes.

Some, but hardly all, of the problem areas of the world were something similar. As the Empire had difficulties after 1945, the Brits pleaded with Washington to let them continue, and to help them if necessary. London warned that if it withdrew things would get much, much worse. Washington, however, had other ideas and decided to go it alone. Hasn't worked out so well.

Lets see, if Italian agents nabbed an American citizen off the streets of New York City and took him to Egypt to be interrogated, the Americans commenting here would be okay with that?

Kudos to the judge. Laws are there to protect us all--the innocent and the guilty. It's not sufficient to dismiss extraordinary rendition by assuming that all those sent abroad were guilty. Some were. Some weren't. We saw what happened during the "j'accuse" era of the French Revolution--the mere allegation of wrongdoing was enough to invoke the guillotine. The US Government puts a lot of money into funding "rule of law" programmes in developing countries. There is either a rule of law, or there is not. It either applies to everyone, or it applies to no one. The US can't have it both ways--apply the rule of law in most cases, but not in cases where the US is involved (as, for instance, in the US refusal to adhere to the International Criminal Tribunal in respect of war crimes).

It is difficult to take US America's war on terrorism seriously when they are guilty of terrorism.

It would be nice to see Bush and Cheney tried in criminal courts around the world so that they are subject to extradition as soon as they leave their own borders. It would be nice to see them face some negative impacts for their murders and thieving.

Doesn't everyone know that the Americans are above any and all laws on this planet!

I suppose justice in the US is much better. O. J. Simpson, the late Michael Jackson think it is. Many of the over 2,000,000 US prison inmates think it isn't, neither do the hundreds of detained terrorist SUSPECTS throughout the US and at Guantánamo Bay.

Canada and the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding in 1988 to prevent cross-border kidnappings and assure that no Canadian can be taken from Canada to a U.S. jurisdiction. The memorandum was the result of the 1981 abduction of Toronto man Sidney Jaffe, who was wanted in Florida on land fraud charges. He was convicted but eventually released and returned to Canada following protests from the Canadian government. Bounty hunter Daniel Kear was extradited to Canada and convicted of kidnapping.

Send in your request to the Make-A-Wish Foundation along with a weeks stay at Disney World.

When it comes to war I am against grassed stained hippies and their 1972 ideology.

Do you really believe this nonsense? Have you really become that paranoid that you feel our country is going to get taken over unless we torture people?

I think Obama has pretty much gutted the CIA so it is probably not going to be doing much anymore. I think that what would make you Canucks and all of Europe happy is if the US were to remove all its troops off of foreign soil totally once and for all. I know it would make me happy. I know we can defend ourselves but I think it would be great fun watching the terrorists and others overrun and take over Europe and the top part of N America. And Italy-thanks for sending all your gangsters and bad guy crooks over here and for creating the American mafia we owe you.

As for our resident "holier than thou" Canadian commentators, all I merely observe that you have a wonderful luxury: You rest in America's shadow and pay only one/fifth of what it would cost to defend your land...yet, in your security-paid-for-by-others, you enjoy condescending to America. That's fine, folks...we don't mind much. That said, however, Americans' lack of concern over your smugness ought to disturb you. Since Canada (10% of North America's population, 50% of NA's landmass, yet only 3.5% of NA's defense) has chosen to give up the capacity to protect itself, it has ceded continental defense to America. YOUR decisions have made Canada into a military protectorate of America.

Hundreds of thousands in the middle east were killed by bombs, missiles, depleted uranium, and so on, for decades before the little 9-11 bubble.

Before Americans slag Italy too much, they might want to remember that it was a member of the 'coalition of the willing' and that it had 3,200 soldiers in Iraq at the time this mess transpired.

Just send them to Afghanistan wearing an American flag for clothes, then we'll see how gung-ho proud-to-be-American they truly are. [When I first travelled to Europe in 1971, I met many young Americans who put Canadian flags on their backpacks and luggage. DJ]

In good times, the Corporate Capitalists stand together as one. In tough times, each for his own. Sauve qui peut. [Every man for himself.] There is no honour among thieves.

Your previous president declared a war on terror. Terror is not a country. He had America attack Iraq which although ruled by a brutal tyrant (a former US ally like Pinochet and the Shah), was not engaged in terror and had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He took away many of your civil rights. He condoned illegal acts both in the US and overseas. You let him do this to you - and now you are paying the price. Officially the US was never at war post 9/11. I suggest you reread the US constitution to find out why. And I suggest you suck it up, apologize, retrench and start anew. [Americans, it seems, are willing to pay billions and trillions for any government program as long as it has the word “War” in it. DJ]

I believe that the rifle that killed our President Kennedy was made in Italy. We should put Italy on trial for this war crime and find them guilty in absentia.

Seems to be pretty hard to explain to people that you simply don't go into a sovereign nation and abduct people off the street then smuggle them out of the country to be tortured. It used to be pretty obvious to almost everyone that this was a big no no. Amazing how people have forgotten about national rights, international rights, and individual rights, not to mention a whole raft of political and legal issues nationally and internationally.

I think the USA would have a problem with any foreigner abducting someone from the streets of New York and smuggling them out of the country to be tortured. Don't know why some think the same wouldn't apply elsewhere.

The point of view Syed Abbas [another poster] appears to represent -- continuous praises in "submission" to God, definite ideas on relations among the sexes, etc., etc., going on the history of his posts -- is more odious than what the fearers of submissiono-fascism have to say. Fortunately, it is possible for there to be no reason to fear it. Since the culture of "submission" has its roots in the middle east, it would have been best to keep it there, in its place, and to steer clear. Unfortunately, instead of doing so, N. America got involved with it, and has now sunk to its own lowest levels of "submission". Fortunately Europe has not: not yet, in any case.

Iran was doing just fine in 1953 having just elected a fledgling democratic parliament. But you see there was oil there and those dastardly Iranians wanted to benefit from it themselves.

Now if the USA would stop interfering in the rest of the planet we would have a much more peaceful existence - but all the Daddy Warbucks wouldn't like that as they couldn't get rich selling weapons to their own government and half the planet would have no choice but to get involved . . .

I find it fascinating that Canuckleheads are so engrossed in what Americans do Constitutionally.

Your bonehead foreign policy with its brute force diplomacy has destroyed much of the international goodwill you once enjoyed, and made some serious enemies besides, including the nation of terrorism (where is that found on the map again?) You have an insatiable appetite for drugs that you blame on opium growers. Millions of your own citizens incarcerated and still you want to kidnap random foreigners and imprison them indefinitely without due process. The USMC suffers from R-ANIS (Repetitive Autonomous Nation Invasion Syndrome). The disparity in wealth so extreme that is not even a class system anymore, it is now officially an oligarchy. You force your junk culture down everyone's throats. I could go on, but you are in the belly of the beast where you can't even see it, so I am probably not making much sense to you.

As much as I admire Americans individually, as an empire it is broken and in rapid decline. Time to stop with the patronizing, chauvinistic triumphalism already. I had thought the economic collapse caused by Washington and Wall Street would have tempered some of that.

3,000 died 9/11. OK. Let’s ignore non-American deaths before and after as irrelevant. 5,000 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost has been on the order of a trillion or two. Tell me, have your taxes been well spent?

What enemy has the US ever protected us from? If you're our guardian, don't bother. Nobody is coming for us.

When enemies truly abhorrent to our way of live have arisen abroad, we haven't been behind in going abroad to help take them out, and on those occasions have punched WAY above our weight. Perhaps its churlish to point out, but we went to war in 1914 and again in 1939 because we perceived such an enemy. The USN did us a whole fat lot of good then didn't it?

Thanks to the US for protecting us from the evil that it largely created by its destructive foreign policies and allegiances with dictators (Hey, wasn't Saddam on your side at one time? What about Noriega? And that wonderful group of friends in Nicaragua and Chile--now there were two heartwarming relationships). But maybe it's too harsh to say that the threats were created by the US--maybe they were just invented or exaggerated for political reasons. It would have been nice if you had helped for the first three years of each of WWI and WWII--when there was a real war with signed declarations of war, armies, and everything--but to mention it would be impolite (and Canadians are nothing if not polite).

Daniel Johnson was born near the midpoint of the twentieth century in Calgary, Alberta. In his teens he knew he was going to be a writer, which is why he was one of only a handful of boys in his high school typing class—a skill he knew was going to be necessary. He defines himself as a social reformer, not a left winger, the latter being an ideological label which, he says, is why he is not an ideologue. From 1975 to 1981 he was reporter, photographer, then editor of the weekly Airdrie Echo. For more than ten years after that he worked with Peter C. Newman, Canada’s top business writer (notably a series of books, The Canadian Establishment). Through this period Daniel also did some national radio and TV broadcasting. He gave up journalism in the early 1980s because he had no interest in being a hack writer for the mainstream media and became a software developer and programmer. He retired from computers last year and is now back to doing what he loves—writing and trying to make the world a better place