I may have mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating: The Rendition Project is now live and you can see all the stuff we’ve been working on here.
The Project is a collaboration between Kingston University and the University of Kent. 
Along with many others, I worked as an intern on this project for several months. Its aim was (and still is) to gather all the information available relating to rendition and secret detention, in one place. This one place is the website that was recently launched, and it’s become an amazing resource.
Working on the Project, we had to collate an enormous amount of information – on flights, detainees, detention centres, country complicity, and torture methods. You could say that it’s not the most uplifting of subjects. But it felt good to know that we were contributing to spreading awareness about some of the worst human rights abuses of the past decade. Hopefully it’ll help to hold the guilty to account, and to release those still imprisoned without any charge put against them. Like the 89 men cleared for release in Guantánamo who still are not allowed to go home.
Though we had to get through a great deal of information, there are still many unfortunate gaps that people are reluctant to fill. Many of those rendered in the CIA’s extraordinary renditions programme simply disappeared. Some were threatened not to say anything about their treatment upon release. Those who ended up in Guantánamo or other notorious prisons around the world may also have long gaps in their history, and it might be hard even for them to know where they were held at all times. Some were taken to several so-called “black sites” – in Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Romania, Poland, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Libya… The list is long. If they’re still held it’s very possible that they’ve lost their minds – a person can only deal with so much torture. The mental impact on someone who has been physically hurt, but also exposed to extremely loud music, sleep and food deprivation, and extensive isolation, for years on end, is unimaginable.
By lowering ourselves to the level of dictators and tyrants in the ‘War on Terror’, ‘Western’ countries have made absolutely sure that many parts of the world will never trust them again. Prejudice, hatred and discrimination has increased on both sides – all because of a horrible act resulting in the killing of thousands of civilians on 9/11. It’s hard to see the logic of the response, because there is none. Revenge never leads to any good, and neither does panic.
So, to learn more about this issue, I urge you all to go to http://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/. It’s about time people are held to account for the harmful impulses of the post-9/11 decade.
In a nutshell 