THE EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION OF RAYMOND AZAR: An Early Case of Contradictions Between Candidate Obama’s promises and President Obama’s realpolitics.

THE EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION OF RAYMOND AZAR: An Early Case of Contradictions Between Candidate Obama’s promises and President Obama’s realpolitics.

Raymond Azar worked for a Lebanese construction company, one with a multi-billion dollar Pentagon reconstruction contract in Afghanistan. Mr. Azar and a fellow-employee decided at some point that they could make extra money for themselves by padding the charges for materials and services their company was providing. All they had to do was convince the Army Corps of Engineers officer who vetted those charges to look the other way when the bills arrived, for a little money of his own to grease the way, of course.

On April 7, 2009, where they had traveled for a meeting to discs the stat of one of his company's US government contracts, Azar and a Lebanese-American colleague, Dinorah Cobos, were seized by "at least eight" heavily armed FBI agents in Kabul, Afghanistan.

On a ride to the infamous Bagram air base in Afghanistan – astute readers will remember this as the site of the torture-homicides involving US interrogators exposed in the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side -- Azar contends that a federal agent pulled a photograph of Azar's wife and four children from his wallet. The agent allegedly said to confess, that you were bribing the contract officer or you may "never see them again." Azar told his lawyers he interpreted that as a threat to do physical harm to his family. .

Azar alleges that, upon arriving at Bagram, the two were then separated, and he was shackled to a chair in an office and left there unattended for seven hours.

According to his court filings, Azar claims he was hooded, stripped naked (and then photographed) and subjected to a 'body cavity search.' Azar was then threatened repeatedly, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and induced to sign a confession.

Then, in the midst of a cold rainstorm he was taken to an unheated metal shipping container that had been converted to act as a kind of mobile prison-cell. The cell was brightly lit and although the outside temperature approached freezing, he was given only a thin blanket. He also claims that he was not permitted to sleep during his confinement at Bagram, which lasted over a day. Then he was told he was going to take a plane trip; his handlers would not tell him where he was going. Azar admitted in the court papers that, at that point, he feared he was being shipped off to Guantanamo, there to be ‘disappeared’ and tortured. After all, how else could the absence of any Afghan authorities, the hooding, and other torture techniques be explained?

Before boarding the Gulfstream V executive jet, Azar was shackled, blindfolded and had earphones placed on his head. Occasionally, the earphones and blindfold were removed so that his interrogation by FBI agents could continue. The 16-hour flight was broken by a refueling stop in Tbilisi, Georgia -- which has long served as a pit stop for rendition flights into and out of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. During the flight, according to papers filed by the Justice Department, Azar confessed to the charges against him--essentially that he was aware of corrupt payments made to a US government contract agent to help Susima International, Azar’s employer, secure or extend its contracts with US government agencies.

After that, Azar can say that the trip only ended for him, setting foot on the tarmac manacled from a Gulfstream in Manassas, Virginia, perhaps 48 hours after he was first captured. From there he was taken by van to a local court building and formally arrested and charged in a federal antitrust probe

There are, admittedly, some ways in which this case is unlike the renditions of the Bush/Cheney-era, although that is not necessarily a good thing. This rendition involved no black sites, and was clearly driven by a desire to get the target quickly before an American court.

But even more significantly, and more chillingly, the target wasn't even a terror suspect; instead, he was merely suspected of engaging in fraud. But in a troubling intimation of the previous, almost universally detested, administration, the distinct odor accusations of torture hover menacingly over this case.

Azar's attorneys are now seeking to suppress that confession, arguing it was secured by torture and that Azar, a native Arabic speaker, did not understand English well enough to have given it.

The Justice Department acknowledges many of Azar's specific claims, but the FBI specifically denies that Azar was ever threatened with a photograph of his family or that he was malnourished. They say that he was kept in a comfortable chair in a comfortable room and offered blankets, food and water. Further, their spokesperson heatedly argues that the characterization of these techniques as ‘torture’ is ‘hyperbolic’

The department also insists that the decision to subject Azar to sensory deprivation for the duration of his flight to America was ‘according to accepted procedure for the transport of prisoners by airplane’ and that it was ‘done solely for the safety of the prisoners and the FBI agents accompanying them.’ The decision to use those techniques is attributed to FBI Special Agent Nicholas Zambeck, who heads the Bureau's hostage rescue and negotiation team in Afghanistan. These procedures--particularly the blindfolding and shackling -- correspond to standard Bush-era enhanced interrogation techniques, which President Obama declared banned immediately on his arrival in office.

Raymond Azar also has the unlikely distinction of being the first target of a rendition carried out in the Obama presidency.

"To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people, … (t)his means ending the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of law."

That was Candidate Obama criticizing the Bush/Cheney initiated practice of extraordinary renditions.

However, is was also noted, even then, that Mr. Obama was consistently careful never to be caught actually being quoted as promising to ending the practice of renditions entirely. Shortly after his inauguration, in fact, senior administration officials were quick to preach how abuses including torture would end, yet at the same time, ‘ordinary’ renditions - the spiriting away of suspects from other countries without going through the formal procedures demanded from the laws of other countries -- would be continued, albeit in a ‘cleaned-up’ form.

During the Bush/Cheney gang’s residence of the White House, rendition typically involved intensive interrogation using highly coercive techniques or outright torture, most often at the hands of non-American proxies (our agents need their deniability, after all, Mr. Cheney keeps arguing these days). But contrast this attitude/behavior with the renditions that occurred in the George H.W. BushGeorge H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations; those involved transferring someone to stand trial on documented criminal charges--not ‘disappearing’ a person to a black site or a third country with no oversight and even less documentation.

In all three previous administrations, renditions were reserved solely for dangerous terrorists and violent drug kingpins. Raymond Azar is a secondary figure in a small-time contract fraud case at his worse, not accused of terrorism, or even anything particularly violent.

The decision to seize Azar in Afghanistan came in April, 2009, the Obama administration second month. However, Justice Department documents suggest that plans were hatched as early as December 2008, before the transfer of power had even begun. The Justice Department is refusing requests for information about the identity of the official who signed the secret warrant in Afghanistan to apprehend Azar and Cobos.

"The United States views contract fraud as a very serious matter," Public Affairs Deputy Director Gina Talamona says.

Whatever happens to Azar and his co-defendant, some intriguing questions hover over this case. Why such aggressive and dramatic techniques were used in connection with the apprehension of a man suspected of a small-scale white collar? Does it tell how the rendition program is being reshaped? Is the Obama team eliminating Bush era abuses and bringing the program back to its Clinton-era criminal justice roots? Or will the program continue to be plagued by charges of torture?

This case, when coupled with the recent announcement that military combat forces in Afghanistan will be increased by 14,000, seems to be very strong signs that Mr. Obama is not going to change all the things that candidate Obama promised he would. An especially troubling direction, since the only corner of American society that still wholeheartedly supports continued commitment are factions of the military-industrial complex, and they of course are profiting from the death and destruction that is being visited on the people there.