Tuesday, July 19, 2005

The term used by the US government for sending people to other countries to be interrogated by foreign intelligence services (read tortured) is "Extraordinary Rendition".

An interesting coincidence is the use of the term "rendition" in the context of sending escaped slaves back to the states of their origin in Antebellum America. This usage is found in South Carolina's Declaration of Independence during the US Civil War:

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

its a common international law term - means to send some one back to a country othern then the state of nationality (roughly). and keep in mind back in the 1850s, the southern states saw themselves as STATES - thus diserving of international legal rights.