Syria’s Sednaya prison, the “human slaughterhouse” that everyone seems to be condemning at the moment
Remember the Cheney-Bush Administration's "extraordinary rendition"?
The Islamist version of storming the Bastille in Syria freeing prison from Sednaya prison, which apparently was known as a “human slaughterhouse.”
So far, I haven’t seen any war-on-terror commentary on how the Assad regime was a secular authoritarian government and therefore it’s a great thing that they tortured prisoners, some of whom were presumably Islamists.
Because the Cheney-Bush Administration made a practice of sending terrorism suspects to Syria to be tortured. Called the “extraordinary rendition” program. It was an important step among many that led to extremists capture of the Supreme Court and the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. Because the American government held none of the participants in that program legally responsible for their criminal acts. Kamala Harris’ campaign was thrilled to have the endorsement of Liz and Dick Cheney for her 2024 Presidential bid.
Al Jazeera ran this report on the current prison story. The facts it reports are gross.1
The Supreme Court in 2004 validated the acts of extraordinary rendition in the case of Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain “found that government agents are generally immune from civil or criminal liability for their official conduct abroad, even if that conduct originates in the United States. The practice of extraordinary rendition then accelerated to unprecedented levels.”2
Mehdi Hasan commented in 2012 on the Assad regime’s involvement in the program. He describes the fate of a young Canadian citizen, Maher Arar:
On 26 September 2002, he was arrested at JFK airport in New York, where he had been in transit, on his way home to Canada after a family holiday abroad. Following 13 days of questioning, the US authorities, suspecting Arar of ties to al-Qaida based on flawed Canadian police intelligence, "rendered" him not to Canada, where he lived, but to his native Syria, from where his family had fled 15 years earlier.
For the next 10 months, he was detained without charge in a three-foot by six-foot Syrian prison cell where, according to the findings of an official Canadian commission of inquiry, he was tortured. Arar says he was punched, kicked and whipped with an electrical cable during 18-hour interrogation sessions. He received C$10.5m in compensation from the Canadian government and a formal apology from prime minister Stephen Harper for the country's role in his ordeal. …
Arar claims his Syrian torturers were supplied with specific questions by the US government; he was asked the exact same questions in Damascus he had been asked in New York.
After his release, in October 2003, both Syria and Canada publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism. But the US government – first under Bush, and now under Obama – refuses to discuss the matter, let alone apologise. The Arar case wasn't a one-off. According to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, who has spent much of the past decade investigating what she calls "the dark side" of the war on terror, Syria was one of the "most common" destinations for rendered suspects. Or, in the chilling words of former CIA agent Robert Baer, in 2004: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria."3 [my emphasis]
The Obama Administration effectively granted participants in this criminal program impunity, following in the approach. And, in any case, the SCOTUS decision in the Sosa case on wide-ranging immunity.
Dan Froomkin in 2018 commented on Obama’s position:
Obama has renounced torture. He has issued a new executive order defining acceptable interrogation techniques. He has reasserted the illegality of many of the techniques used in American prisons around the world during the first few years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But he has also repeatedly expressed his desire to “look forward instead of looking backward.” As a result, there has yet to be any accountability for the actions of the Bush/Cheney administration. And none appears forthcoming.
And without accountability — without either criminal prosecutions or some sort of official national reckoning of what took place — there’s no reason to think that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, some other president or vice president will not decide to torture again.4
He also quotes legal scholar Karen Greenberg:
“We’re not a nation you can rely on not to torture,” she said. “We’re not as much of an outlaw nation as we used to be, but we are wiling to be an outlaw nation when it suits our
Many expected Obama would take more definitive action to prevent what the last administration wrought from ever happening again. Obama, however, “has refused to clamp down on [torture] in a way that would make it hard for people in the future to do it,” Greenberg said.
Executive impunity for criminal acts by the government– and, more widely, elite impunity for a variety of crimes in public and private business – has become a gaping hole in the rule of law in the United States.
With a second Trump Presidency coming soon, we’re a long way from repairing that problem. In fact, the gaping hole is almost certain to widen during the next four years.
Assad's prisons are 'human slaughterhouses' with daily torture and executions: Syrian White Helmets. Al Jazeera English YouTube channel 12/09/2024. (Accessed: 2024-10-12).
Ryan, Kenneth (2023); "extraordinary rendition". Encyclopedia Britannica 06/21/2023. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/extraordinary-rendition> (Accessed: 2024-10-12).
Hasan, Mehdi (2012): Syria has made a curious transition from US ally to violator of human rights. The Guardian 02/19/2012. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/19/syria-us-ally-human-rights> (Accessed: 2024-10-12).
Froomkin, Dan (2018): Obama Wanted to ‘Look Forward, Not Backward’ on Torture, But He Failed to Look Either Way. Medium 05/13/2018. <https://medium.com/@DanFroomkin/obama-wanted-to-look-forward-not-backward-on-torture-but-he-failed-to-look-either-way-c1b258ac3258> (Accessed: 2024-10-12).