Abstract
In Angola, Executive Outcomes, a South Africa-based PMC, used fuel air explosives—a highly effective but particularly tortuous weapon;1 in Iraq the use of untrained PMC personnel in interrogation resulted in the widely publicized Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Even the “War on Terror” has not been spared. The tentacle of the PMC is manifest in the emerging practice of the United States government labeled “extraordinary rendition”—an insidious scheme involving the transfer of terrorism suspects to third countries that harbor no qualms about using all manner of processes and procedures to “extract information.”2 As in the case of the Abu Ghraib abuse, various international norms were violated, including the Convention against Torture (CAT) and the 1949 Geneva Conventions which prohibit governments from taking such actions. However, the ambiguous legal status of PMCs under existing international law offers leeway for countries to not only bend but also occasionally breach their international legal obligations, thus threatening the very fabric of the international legal order.3
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