Extraordinary rendition. So what’s all the fuss?

America seeks, but fails, to quell the uproar in Europe over CIA shenanigans

The European left has long treasured the myth that CIA agents snatch people off the streets and whisk them off to covert prisons around the world for harsh interrogation. Now, for the first time, America has admitted that at least part of this is true. For decades, the United States--and other countries--have used "renditions" to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to third countries "where they can be questioned, held or brought to justice", Condoleezza Rice declared this week.

However, the secretary of state insisted at the start of a five-day trip to Europe, that the United States "does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances". It is American policy to comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the UN Convention Against Torture, of which it is a signatory. America is a "country of laws" and believes in the rule of law, she said. It has always respected, and will continue to respect, the sovereignty of other countries co-operating with it in its war on terror.

Ms Rice's aim was to reassure America's European allies, still fuming over reports that their own airspace and territory had been used by the CIA for its covert operations, including secret prisons. Alas, such is the suspicion about America and its treatment of terrorist suspects following Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib that her hosts immediately scoured her meticulously crafted declaration for loopholes. Worse, they found plenty of them.

Ms Rice said, for example, that America does not use other countries' airspace or airports to transport detainees to a third country where they "will be tortured". But the Convention Against Torture makes it unlawful to transport anyone to a country where there are "substantial grounds" for believing they might be tortured.

Ms Rice refused to confirm or deny the existence of secret CIA prisons for interrogating terrorist suspects in Europe. It might compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement or military matters, she explained. But, given her admission that detainees have been transported to third countries for interrogation, the presumption must be that undisclosed detention centres do exist--or have done in the past--where such interrogations take place. Why else place them outside America and keep them secret?

The uproar was provoked by a report on November 2nd in the Washington Post. It claimed to have evidence of covert CIA camps in at least eight countries, some of them in eastern Europe. Poland and Romania, the likeliest suspects, both deny the charge. ABC News, citing past and present CIA officials, say those camps, allegedly containing 11 top al-Qaeda suspects, have now been moved to north Africa.

Under the Geneva Conventions, a country involved in an international armed conflict must notify the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of anyone it is holding prisoner and allow it to visit him. But as the "war on terror" is not classified as an international conflict, the organisation can only "offer its services" to monitor American camps--it has no right of access. The Bush administration has let the Red Cross into Guantanamo and prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it has refused to reply to repeated requests for notification of, and access to, undisclosed detention camps.

Ms Rice insists that the United States always respects the "sovereignty" of other countries. Where a foreign government chooses to co-operate in a rendition, this is perfectly permissible under international law, she says. This is correct, provided that the detainee has not been illegally abducted, and that he is not being sent to a country where he may be maltreated. Helping another nation to violate international law is itself a violation of the law.

European allegations of "hundreds" of CIA "torture flights" to a new "Gulag Archipelago" in eastern Europe are "so ludicrously overblown as to be laughable", American officials protest. Privately, they imply the Europeans are hypocrites: many of those now grousing about America's anti-terrorist policies have acquiesced in CIA operations on their territories.

All this is probably true. But snatching people off a foreign country's streets and holding them incommunicado in an undisclosed place without charge for months, even years, without even their families' knowledge, is unlawful, whether or not torture is involved. Such hidden detentions are explicitly banned under a new Convention on Enforced Disappearances, now being drawn up by the UN. They would also be outlawed under American law in Senator John McCain's proposed bill prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by American military personnel or intelligence agents wherever they are.

Some administration officials have argued that the Convention Against Torture applies only to acts carried out within America's territorial jurisdiction. Critics allege that this explains why so many of America's interrogation centres--including Guantanamo--are beyond its borders. Dick Cheney has fought hard against Mr McCain's amendment, it seems, precisely because it would remove any doubt, banning the use of cruel and inhuman techniques everywhere and by everyone.

This week, Ms Rice seemed to change course: she said that the UN ban on the torture or cruel treatment of detainees applies to all American personnel (including the CIA) throughout the world. The White House insisted this is "existing policy". But if the secretary of state is right, why on earth is the vice-president fighting to keep the CIA out of the McCain ban?

During Ms Rice's visit to Berlin, Angela Merkel, Germany's new chancellor, announced that the United States had "accepted" that it had "erroneously taken" a German citizen to a jail in Afghanistan. Khaled al-Masri, who is now suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment, claims to have been abducted by American agents while on holiday in Macedonia with his family in 2003. In Afghanistan, he says, he was held for five months and tortured, before being released without charge after it was discovered that he had been confused with an al-Qaeda suspect of the same name. While refusing to comment on Mr Masri's case, Ms Rice confessed that "any policy will sometimes result in errors".

The Europeans are not the only ones who need convincing. This week, Louise Arbour, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, warned that the absolute ban on torture could become a casualty of the "war on terror". Without naming the United States, she criticised "governments in a number of countries" who were claiming that the world had changed and that the old rules no longer applied. No credible case for this had been made, she insisted. Ms Rice has work to do.