Secret CIA Prisons in Your Backyard

Secret CIA Prisons in Your Backyard:
"Roychoudhuri: You quote 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick in the book: "In criminal justice, you either prosecute suspects or let them go. But if you've treated them in ways that won't allow you to prosecute them, you're in this no man's land. What do you do with those people?" Based on the fact that it's so difficult to bring these people back out of this extralegal system, do you have any sense of where the rendition program is going?

Paglen: This is the crucial question that we are facing right now. Bush transferred a handful of guys to Guantanamo and acknowledged they were kept in these secret prisons. Congress has to come up with a framework to prosecute these guys. It's common knowledge that most of the guys at Guantanamo are nobodies. Many were turned in by bounty hunters. But the guys that Bush transferred to Guantanamo Bay are guys that everybody agrees are bad guys. The sticking point is that they have tortured them for years and the evidence against them is totally tainted by rendition and torture. These are guys that people definitely want to see put on trial. By moving them to Guantanamo Bay, Bush is basically challenging Congress and saying, "If you want to put Khaled Sheikh Mohammed on trial, you're going to have to retroactively authorize torture, rendition, and the black site program."

If Congress does authorize the president's version of the bill, they're not only retroactively authorizing torture, they're creating a legal framework for the future. That would create a system where disappearing and torturing people would become a part of the law."

(Via AlterNet.)