SAN FRANCISCO - December 11 - The American Civil Liberties Union will be in federal appeals court in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 15 at 10:00 a.m. PST to argue that a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. for its role in the Bush administration's unlawful "extraordinary rendition" program should go forward. The government has repeatedly misused the state secrets privilege in an attempt to have the case thrown out. To this day, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture policies has had his day in court.
ACLU video explains more about the case:
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The ACLU and the ACLU of Northern California brought the lawsuit in May 2007 on behalf of five men who the CIA kidnapped, forcibly disappeared and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas, where they were interrogated under torture. The lawsuit charges that Jeppesen knowingly participated in the forcible disappearance and torture of the men by providing critical flight planning and logistical support services to the aircraft and crews used by the CIA to carry out their "extraordinary rendition." The Bush administration intervened in the case, improperly asserting the state secrets privilege to have the lawsuit thrown out, but in April a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the government can only invoke the state secrets privilege with respect to specific evidence - not to dismiss an entire suit. The Obama administration's appeal of that decision will be now be heard by an en banc panel of 11 judges.
