extraordinary rendition

noun

secret or forcible rendition of a suspected criminal to another country, often a country known to violate human rights and due process of law:
the CIA’s extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects;
The legality and morality of extraordinary rendition have been a matter of intense debate.

noun

the process by which a country seizes a person assumed to be involved in terrorist activity and then transports him or her for interrogation to a country where due process of law is unlikely to be respected

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Word History and Origins

Origin of extraordinary rendition¹

First recorded in 1980–85

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

The technical term for such detainee transfers is “extraordinary rendition.”

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Extraordinary rendition violates the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which explicitly prohibits sending someone to another country to be mistreated or tortured.

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I was reminded of such instances of “extraordinary rendition” in the Bush-Cheney era when I read about the Trump administration’s March 2025 deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego García to a grim prison in El Salvador.

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The closest parallel I can think of is the infamous post-9/11 extraordinary rendition program, which already rested on incredibly shaky ground and did not involve people removed from the United States itself.

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Or, as a student with an American flag and a Jews 4 Civil Liberties sign said of the chant: “I don’t love sharing a foxhole with them. But you’d like there to be a big tent for the extraordinary rendition of journalists.”

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extraordinary ray extraordinary wave

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