Rendition – It’s Extraordinary

J and I watched a film the other night. Nothing unusual in that? Well there was actually. I was already watching the football on my PC and our movie tastes are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but after the first few minutes I was hooked and decided the football could take a back seat. Although it was an English game, the transmission was coming from Russia, Iraq and finally England in ten minute chunks, so it was rather difficult to follow anyway. And so I settled down to watch the film.

Let’s put me in the frame. Let’s imagine my name is Khan. Although I’ve worked in the UK for over 20 years I was actually born in Egypt and I obviously have a middle-eastern appearance. I’m flying out to the US on business for BT (my employer). My wife has dropped me off at the airport and knows she’ll get a call when I get to the office or my hotel……..but after 3 days no call. She contacts the airline who confirm I was on board. An in-flight credit-card transaction shows that I must have been on the flight but there is no trace of me. What my wife does not know is that the American CIA intercepted me at JFK, put me onto a ‘private’ flight to Egypt where, when I arrive in handcuffs and blindfolded, I am treated as a suspected terrorist because there’s a mobile phone record which shows that a known terrorist group has called my number.

I protest that there are millions of Khans and that I’m always getting wrong-number calls but it does no good. My job as a senior researcher into electro-chemical transmissions gives me the profile of a bomber and so I am tortured until near death.

In this case, the guy was rescued, but at the end of the film J was quite disturbed by it and even more so when I told her that this sort of thing goes on all the time. Indeed only a year or so ago, there was a furore in the UK when some of these CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights were stopping in the UK to refuel before carrying on to some country where torture is something of the norm.

And all because the unfortunate guy got a call from a terrorist group by mistake. It’s easily done – wrong calls or texts I mean. In these days of pay-as-you-go mobile phones, did you ever think what happens to the number after you’ve finished using it? After a period of time, it’s given to someone else. I’ve had texts sent to me for the person who had the phone number before. So all you need is the ‘right’ job, have the ‘right’ background and appearance but the wrong phone number and you too could end up being tortured in some Egyptian basement.

Of course, no government acknowledges that these renditions actually take place but the EEC council believes that over the last few years, 100 EU citizens have been ‘renditioned’ to places where they can be tortured. Places which do not recognise the Geneva convention.

So beware. If you start getting dodgy phone calls or texts – well I was going to say ‘run’, but it wouldn’t do any good. They’d get you.

It’s a long URL but it’ll get you to the story of the film.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.criticsrant.com/Images/criticsrant_com/Movie_Rendition/rendition_xlg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.criticsrant.com/archive/2007/10/21/RENDITION-A-Wild-Ride-With-A-Bumpy-Ending.aspx&usg=__2JdAVEd10zvKkOq1ufn_JmRDD98=&h=1186&w=800&sz=801&hl=en&start=1&sig2=Uc94Nq3TSaz-Q9bkUW0p0Q&tbnid=9ta_wuiXM_OTcM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=101&ei=U0k-ScDcEpygQfPnueMP&prev=/images%3Fq%3Drendition%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG