The Wronged Man (re: U.S. secret prisons)

[MountainLaurel]

Is it facism yet?

Khaled al-Masri was supposed to have been disappeared by black-hooded CIA paramilitaries in the dead of night. One minute he was riding a bus in Macedonia, the next -- poof -- gone. Grabbed by Macedonian agents, handed off to junior CIA operatives in Skopje and then secretly flown to a prison in Afghanistan that didn't officially exist, to be interrogated with rough measures that weren't officially on the books. And then never to be heard from again -- one fewer terrorist in the post-9/11 world.

Instead, on Tuesday, Masri finds himself sitting in an American courtroom so elegant that even his experienced lawyers are commenting on its beautiful dark wood and graceful chandeliers. Dressed in white shirt sleeves and a modest maroon vest, Masri is waiting to see if the judges will allow the CIA to disappear him again.

This time, it's not the physical, flesh-and-blood, burly, ponytailed German citizen with six kids whom the U.S. government wants to make vanish from the face of the Earth. It's his legal case, his very right to have his argument heard in open court, that the CIA is seeking to have disappeared. They argue, citing the state-secrets privilege, that to proceed with the case would damage national security and that this damage outweighs any legal rights Masri may have.

snip

There are also the eight U.S. officials who confirmed to at least one American reporter that Masri spent months in a dank Afghan cell because a couple of CIA officials in Washington had a hunch he was someone he was not and that they just didn't move fast enough when they found out he wasn't. Countless other reporters in the United States and Europe have been told the same by unnamed government officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801810.html

[MountainLaurel]

1. More tidbits from the story

His deteriorating living conditions were a stress on his marriage. On Dec. 30, 2003, he decided to get away, to take a bus trip to Macedonia to clear his head. To make a very long story shorter, Macedonian police took him off the bus and interrogated him at the Skopski Merak Hotel for 23 days.

This being the Internet age, Masri says in one legal declaration: From the hotel Web site "I can identify the actual room where I was held. . . . I even recognize one of the waiters who served me food during my detention there."

At some point a couple of people who sounded American showed up. On Jan. 23, 2004, things took a bad turn. Current and former CIA officials say Masri was believed to have a fake passport and the same name as someone else they were looking for.

He was eventually brought to another room where, according to his affidavit, "I felt two people violently grab my arms. . . . I then felt someone else grab my head with both hands so I was unable to move. . . . Finally they stripped me completely naked and threw me to the ground. . . . I felt a boot in the small of my back. I then felt a stick or some other hard object being forced in my anus. I realized I was being sodomized. Of all the acts these men perpetrated against me, this was the most degrading and shameful."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801810_2.html

[leftchick]

2. much more here....

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,438371,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,647662,00.jpg

Suspected CIA Kidnappers Identified

The US intelligence agents involved in wrongly kidnapping a German citizen of Arab descent could soon face warrants for their arrest. Clues to their identity have turned up from Spanish authorities and German TV journalists.


The case of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was allegedly kidnapped and tortured in secret CIA prisons, continues to unfold. According to a report in the German press on Thursday, the US intelligence agents who wrongly abducted al-Masri might be confronted with warrants for their arrest, as details of their identities become known to German prosecutors.

Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that prosecutors had received a list of names of suspected US kidnappers from Spanish officials. "We now have very specific questions for the Spanish authorities," state prosecutor August Stern told the paper.

Al-Masri says he was wrongly abducted on New Year's Eve 2003 in Macedonia and detained in various secret overseas prisons often referred to as "black sites." His five month ordeal finally ended when he was dumped on an abandoned road in Albania.

Al-Masri's case is one of the best known cases of extraordinary rendition, a practice the United States is thought to use against terror suspects. The practice has come under considerable criticism by human rights groups that allege the US officials spirit the suspects away to countries that use questionable interrogation methods illegal under US law.