Rendition connection

News that amid five days of protests, Omar Suleiman has been named vice president of Egypt is a reminder that the abuses that drove the people into the streets there had too much assistance from America, including right here in the Triangle.

According to journalist Stephen Grey, Suleiman was the Egyptian conduit for the U.S. extraordinary rendition flights closely linked to torture.

Many of those flights took off from an airport in Johnston County. Grey's book "Ghost Plane" starts with the journey of one such Johnston County flight that led to the rendition and torture of two Egyptian men, one of whom was later released without ever being charged with a crime.

Grey writes that Suleiman approved these flights, part of a system of torture that Amnesty International calls systematic. To support the people in Cairo trying to change those abuses, we in North Carolina must end our own policies and acts that have sustained them.

Geoffrey Mock

Chair, Middle East Country Specialists, Amnesty International USA

Durham