Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, were under pressure last night to refute convincingly claims that Britain has been complicit in alleged use of CIA planes to take suspected terrorists for torture in secret camps abroad. The Independent Online edition: “Row over CIA ‘Torture’ Flights
MI6 officers interrogated a former UK student in Pakistan, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday. The man, a terrorist suspect, says MI6 handed him to the CIA for “extraordinary rendition” and torture. The Independent Online edition: “Rendition Victim was Handed over to the US by MI6”
“Are we winning yet? Well, the current focus on the CIA policy of flying terror suspects to countries where they can be questioned outside the protection of US law reveals that the latest word to get its ass kicked is “rendition”. That, and the more vogueish phrase “extraordinary rendition”. Hitherto, for me at least, “rendition” conjured up images of musical actors dressed in brightly coloured clothes crying “hey, let’s do a song about it!”. In its qualified state, it would indicate someone garnering critical acclaim for said rendering, as in: “That really was an extraordinary rendition of Memory from Cats.” Now it turns out the phrase refers to sitting on the tarmac at Glasgow Prestwick airport while your CIA interrogators stock up on fuel before exporting you to some facility that doesn’t show up on any Romanian Ordnance Survey maps. Who knew?”
The Guardian: The war on the literal