On Wednesday 30 July 2008 at 7-9pm
At Garden Court Chambers, 57-60 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LS (nearest tube: Holborn)

Introduced in 1995 by Bill Clinton’s administration, the use of the CIA’s extralegal system of extraordinary rendition has accelerated since 2001 and has resulted in the kidnap, transfer to third countries and torture of tens of thousands of individuals. Covering a global network of secret prisons and places such as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, detainees are held incommunicado and without access to legal or medical professionals. A system of detention and cruel and inhuman forms of punishment has grown up outside of the known confines of international law, leaving detainees vulnerable and exposed to the caprices of their captors and without access to due process, even after their release. With international complicity, including that of the British government, a whole new system of lawlessness has come into being and has been sanctioned by international silence. Come and learn more from lawyers who have represented individuals caught up in what the Council of Europe has described as the “spider’s web” of “detentions and transfers” with the “collusion” of its members.