Khalid El-Masri was a German citizen when he was detained on 31 December 2003 by Macedonian officials because his name was on a terrorist list. American security officials, described as a “black snatch team”, renditioned El-Masri on 24 January 2004.
El-Masri alleges that they beat him, stripped him naked, drugged him, and gave him an enema. He was then dressed in a diaper and a jumpsuit, and flown to Baghdad, then immediately to “the salt pit”, a covert CIA interrogation center in Afghanistan. El-Masri states that he was beaten and sodomized while in American custody.
In March, 2004, El-Masri went on a hunger strike to demand that he be given due process. He managed to get a meeting with the prison director and a CIA officer known as “The Boss”. They conceded he should not be imprisoned but refused to release him.
28 May 2004, El-Masri was released in the middle of the night on a desolate road in Albania with no funds to get home.
December 2005, El-Masri described an account of this whole experience in the Los Angeles Times.
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/18/opinion/oe-masri18
December 2005, the ACLU helps El-Masri file suit in the USA against former CIA director George Tenet and the owners of the private jets, leased to the US government, that the CIA used to transport him. May 2006, Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis, III dismissed the lawsuit, invoking the “state secrets privilege”. June 2007 the ACLU filed a petition for certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court. October 2007, the petition was denied by the Supreme Court without comment.
The “state secret” that the government is apparently protecting? The fact that America kidnaps and tortures people.
Post a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.