Editorial: America's heart of darkness

Before leaving for European capitals this week, the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, gave an interview to USA Today that was considered important enough for American embassies to draw to the attention of newspapers abroad. It dealt with her Government's assumption of the right to seize people in foreign countries and secretly detain them without trial in third countries that sanction torture.

The secretary made no apologies for the kidnappings on foreign soil, which the US calls "rendition". In the war on terror, she said, America was up against enemies that did not respect national borders and nor could the US in its pursuit of them. But she also said these renditions were "never in violation of other countries' sovereignty", which can only mean they occur with the connivance of the country in which they are carried out and countries through which the prisoner is transported.

This leaves an interesting question for governments such as ours to answer. Do we, would we, have we allowed US agents to snatch people in New Zealand and spirit them away to be held indefinitely in a place unknown? If so, we have a right to know that the civil liberties we suppose to be the right of everyone within New Zealand's jurisdiction have been seriously compromised. Dr Rice's European tour may not have been much eased by her candour in this respect.

She also strenuously denied that the US turned a blind eye to torture of its secret detainees. "The President has been very clear," she said, "that [detention] is not going to include torture. He's been very clear that it's going to be within the limits of our laws ... " It is hard to know whether this will satisfy critics in Europe, especially after reading yesterday of the experience of a German citizen seized because he had the same name as one of the dead September 11 hijackers. Why would detention centres be set up outside the US unless it was to take advantage of the custodial practices of those countries?

Rendition and foreign detention are carried out by the CIA, which is allowed to operate by different rules from the State Department or even the military. US law, for example, forbids its diplomatic or military representatives to buy influence abroad. But the CIA can do it with impunity and does, hardly bothering to deny that it sometimes hands out money to gain access to places and the support of people the US needs.

Not long ago Vice-President Dick Cheney said there should be an exception for the CIA from certain international norms in the war on terror. Pointedly, Dr Rice declined to endorse that statement when it was put to her. But the suspicion remains that the State Department and the CIA operate by different codes.

This suspicion is fed, as usual, by secrecy. The US has made no secret of its detention of al Qaeda suspects at its Guantanamo base in Cuba. The reason it tries to keep secret its other detention facilities around the world is presumably to protect friendly governments that permitted the facilities to be set up. But that consideration hardly outweighs the interest of the US and its allies against terrorism in upholding the principles for which they stand.

The world ought to know the identities of those being held on suspicion of terrorism or the intention to do harm. Their detention should be known and their condition independently monitored. Abu Ghraib was a warning that Dr Rice acknowledges. She cites the exposure of abuse there as an example of the checks and balances that protect prisoners of an open society. But it was really an example - a mild one at that - of what can happen in prisons outside the normal oversight of a decent society. It is well past time to let some public light into these shadowy places.