Boy, the worse the case, the more BushCo fights to keep it out of the courts and out of public view! I just wonder how many more Khalids are out there.
May 16, 2006
US Fights Redress for CIA Kidnapping 'Mistake'
by William Fisher
The U.S. government has again invoked the "state secrets" privilege, arguing that a public trial of a lawsuit against a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for abducting and imprisoning a German citizen would lead to disclosure of information harmful to U.S. national security.
Once rarely used, the "state secrets" privilege has over the past five years become a routine defense used by the George W. Bush administration to keep cases from being tried.The current case involves a suit brought by Khalid el-Masri. El-Masri was on vacation in Macedonia when he was kidnapped and transported to a CIA-run "black site" in Afghanistan. After several months of confinement in squalid conditions, he was abandoned on a hill in Albania with no explanation. He was never charged with a crime.
El-Masri, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is seeking an apology and money damages from the CIA. The first – and perhaps the last – hearing on the case took place last week before a federal court in Alexandria, Va. The lawsuit charges former CIA director George Tenet, other CIA officials, and four U.S.-based aviation corporations with violations of U.S. and universal human rights laws. It claims el-Masri was "victimized by the CIA's policy of 'extraordinary rendition.'"
The Lebanese-born el-Masri says he took a bus from Germany to Macedonia,
where Macedonian agents confiscated his passport and detained him for 23 days, without access to anyone, including his wife.
He says he was then put in a diaper, a belt with chains to his wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold, and a hood. He was put into a plane, his legs and arms spread-eagled and secured to the floor. He was drugged and flown to Afghanistan, where he was held in solitary confinement for five months before being dropped off in a remote rural section of Albania. He claims it was a CIA-leased aircraft that flew him to Afghanistan, and CIA agents who were responsible for his rendition to Afghanistan.<snip>
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=8995
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