On the outrageous grounds that a trial would expose government secrets, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that victims of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program could not file suit against those responsible for their ordeal. The lawsuit in question was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against Jeppesen Dataplan, the Boeing-owned company that transported detainees to the locations where they were tortured.
Extraordinary rendition is a procedure in which the CIA transports a prisoner to a U.S. client state where local authorities use brutal interrogation techniques. In one case, Binyam Muhamed, an Ethiopian citizen and lead plaintiff in the suit, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and sent to Afghanistan and then Guantanamo Bay, before finally being released in 2009.
Although theoretically independent, this case shows that the courts can be counted on to support even the most criminal actions of the other arms of the capitalist state. Under capitalism, human rights are ignored when they interfere with imperialist war.
