The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), jointly with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the Redress Trust and Interrights submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in a leading rendition case.
The case concerns a civil law suit brought by victims of the secret detention and extraordinary rendition program against Jeppesen Dataplan, an airplane company implicated in the rendition circuit, and follows a decision of the Court of Appeals that had dismissed the case from being heard for reasons of state secrecy.
The amicus curiae addresses the obligations
under international human rights law on the right to an effective remedy and reparations
for torture, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations. It shows
that secrecy must not have the purpose or effect to prevent accountability for
serious human rights violations or crimes under international law, and that to
the extent that there are legitimate secrecy claims these can and need to be
accommodated without extinguishing the right to an effective remedy.
The amicus brief is joined by leading
international lawyers Mr Dick Marty, Swiss member of parliament who served as Rapporteur
of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe inquiry on Alleged
Secret Detentions and Unlawful Inter-State Transfers of Detainees involving
Council of Europe Member States, Professor Manfred Nowak, former UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010), Professor Robert Goldman, former UN
Independent Expert on Terrorism and Human Rights and Professor Stefan Trechsel,
Judge ad litem at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY).
Jeppesen Amicus Brief
41 pages / 130 KB
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English