Since the onset of the so-called “War on Terror,” the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Global Justice Clinic have engaged in cutting-edge legal analysis on the practices of extraordinary rendition, disappearances, proxy detention, and detainee abuse as violations of domestic, regional, and international law.
Justice, Accountability, and Reparations
CHRGJ and the Clinic have worked closely with human rights organizations, litigators, regional groups, parliamentary bodies, and other actors to end abuses by the United States and collaborating countries, including by exploring avenues for justice for two victims of the CIA extraordinary rendition program and former “black site” detainees represented by the Clinic, Mohammed al-Asad and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah.
Those efforts have involved:
- Litigation of a case before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on behalf of Mr. al-Asad, who was secretly detained in Djibouti during his illegal odyssey
- Litigation and Advocacy before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking to challenge impunity and hold the United States accountable for torture and other forms of detainee abuse
- Participation in a lawsuit against Jeppesen, a subsidiary of Boeing, for allegedly facilitating and carrying out the illegal transfer of Mr. Bashmilah
Extraordinary Rendition
The Clinic and the Center have been pioneers in exposing the illegality of extraordinary rendition, the transfer of individuals to a country where they face a real risk of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The Clinic has played a key role in defining extraordinary rendition, publishing the first, widely cited analysis of the practice under human rights and humanitarian law in 2004. The Clinic also engaged in collaborative efforts to identify national security-related “disappeared” persons and to pursue remedies for persons held in “black sites.”
The Clinic’s work has helped to expose the role of other states in this global network of extraordinary rendition, demonstrating how those states’ facilitation of extraordinary renditions and disappearances violates international law. To that end, the Clinic has actively supported investigations into foreign state assistance for the US torture program.
Proxy Detention
With the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the Clinic’s work has expanded to include inquiry into proxy detention, the imprisonment of individuals by allied governments or forces at the behest of, or with the collaboration of the United States for the purpose of interrogation or incapacitation. In many cases, proxy detention takes place in secret and amounts to an enforced disappearance, and it is frequently accompanied by torture and other forms of ill-treatment.
For a more complete archive of documents and news relating to the Global Justice Clinic’s work on rendition, secret prisons, torture, and proxy detention, visit the Center’s searchable Document Center and News Archive.
Al-Asad v. Djibouti (African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights) 
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