HVD: High-Value Detainee
HVD #56SS / First Name: Hassan
“[W]e don’t kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them.”
A man walks down the street in a foreign city. A car stops, men dressed in black with masks over their faces jump out, grab him and spirit him away to where a private plane — usually a Gulfstream jet — is waiting. The man is shackled, perhaps hooded, perhaps drugged. The plane takes off and travels to somewhere in Poland or Romania, Egypt or Syria. The man is held captive, perhaps for months. What he endures is often physical and mental degradation and pain.
The scenario may sound like a spy thriller or a video game, but extraordinary rendition is all too real.
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The term extraordinary rendition is used to describe the practice of secretly capturing suspected criminals or terrorists without the knowledge of anyone else, including the governments of the countries in which individuals reside. They are then secretly rendered to other countries, secret detention centers or “black sites.” This way individuals can be transferred to other locations to be tortured by proxy without ostensibly violating the United Nations Convention Against Torture and without the writ of habeas corpus.
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The role of the artist is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said in the media. [Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War].
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