In what is little more than a shameless plug – my mate Stephen Grey has his latest extraordinary rendition film out on UK Channel 4 tomorrow night at 8pm. Stephen has been way out in front on this story in the face of public apathy and institutional indifference – you’ll probably have seen his reporting in the New York Times and the Guardian. The timing of the Todd announcement anyone?Here’s the blurb:

Dispatches: Kidnapped To Order

Dispatches exposes a new phase in America’s war on al Qaeda: the rendition and detention of women and children. Last year, President Bush confirmed the existence of a CIA secret detention programme but he refused to give details and said it was over.

Dispatches reveals new evidence confirming fiercely-denied reports that many of the CIA captives were held and interrogated in Europe. Those prisons may now be closed but the programme is by no means over, it’s just changed. A new front has opened up in the Horn of Africa and America has outsourced its renditions to its allies.

Reporter Stephen Grey (author of Ghost Plane: The Inside Story of the CIA Rendition Programme) investigates America’s global sweep for prisoners – obtaining exclusive interviews with former detainees who claim they have been kidnapped and flown halfway across the world to face torture by America’s allies.

The film opens with an examination of the most notorious rendition story to date – the kidnap of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar. This month in Italy the trial opens of twenty-five CIA officers accused of snatching Omar from the streets of Milan in broad daylight and flying him to Cairo four years ago. Grey travels to Egypt to secure an exclusive interview with Omar who defies the warnings of his interrogators not to speak publicly about his treatment. He details the torture that was inflicted upon him in his fourteen-month detention and the number of other ‘ghost detainees’ he encountered – people who are being held in secret, without charge.

Hats off to the Daily Mail for this piece BTW.