In a backwards move, the ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco dismissed on Wednesday a lawsuit brought against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan for its facilitation of CIA torture flights – reversing an earlier decision. This means that the longest surviving "accountability" case in the US courts has now been blocked – like all the others – on the all-too-familiar "grounds of national security". While a review by the supreme court is still possible, the chances are beyond slim.

In his decision, Judge Raymond Fisher described the case as "a painful conflict between human rights and national security". In the UK, we have seen some politicians conflate "national security" with "national embarrassment" – seeking to keep information secret not because its disclosure would create a risk to the nation, but rather because states do not want the details of their illegal activities revealed. Thankfully, British courts have proved relatively effective at policing this.

Sadly, US courts have proved less robust, adopting the executive position wholesale and shying away from any judicial oversight on the US-led "war on terror". Corporate complicity in US government-sponsored torture remains a largely untold chapter of the "war on terror". As well as Jeppesen Dataplan, other private companies have profited from the US government's "extraordinary rendition" programme, which has resulted in documented cases of detainees being tortured. But none of these companies has yet been brought to court to account for their lucrative part in the system.

A series of legal cases – such as the class action suit brought by Vision Air employees who allege that the company withheld thousands of dollars' worth of "hazard pay" for making flights that, it has been alleged, may have included renditions; and the Kyle "Dusty" Foggo affair, where a CIA officer was convicted of bribery in relation to the awarding of CIA "secret prison" contracts – shines new light into the murky business of what might be called public-private partnership in the CIA secret prison and rendition system.



As the Bush administration's system of illegal detention and torture is uncovered in European courts, it seems clear that justice may take longer to be done in the US. No doubt, the imminent official UK inquiry into torture will examine the issue of private "torture profiteering", and a raft of cases will soon be filed against companies in various European jurisdictions. We have to hope that, as the evidence comes forward, US courts will take a different view of what constitutes genuine national security interests – as opposed to political expediency and government face-saving – when it comes to suits brought by actual human victims of torture.

