Like A Piece of Luggage

Posted on November 28, 2006 in Terrorism

I don’t think it jives as a national security interest when a man sues the CIA because he has been mistaken for a terrorist and then taken off to a remote location to be tortured. I hope the appeals court gives Khaled el-Masri a chance to recover some of the life he lost when operatives jumped him in Macedonia in 2003:

Benjamin Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, told a three-judge appeals panel on Tuesday that the government’s position was absurd because what happened to Mr. Masri had hardly remained secret. He noted that the German government was openly investigating whether its officials had played a role in Mr. Masri’s ordeal, and numerous news accounts have quoted unidentified American officials as confirming what happened.

Mr. Wizner said the government had not plausibly explained how national security interests might be harmed by a trial. He said President Bush acknowledged the C.I.A.’s program, known as extraordinary rendition, this summer, and it is widely known that other governments have been involved. A trial would not disclose state secrets but would merely involve “confirmation of a fact the entire world already knows,” he said….

Mr. Masri, who was born in Kuwait, was arrested in Macedonia on Dec. 31, 2003, and flown to a prison in Afghanistan, where he was held for five months. During his incarceration, he has said, he was shackled, beaten and injected with drugs.

On Tuesday, he said through an interpreter that he was kept in deplorable conditions “not fit for a human being at all.” Upon arrival in Afghanistan, he said, he was told that he was in a place where he had no right to recourse for what happened to him….

Mr. Masri was released in May 2004 on the orders of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned he had been mistakenly identified as a terrorism suspect. He was freed in Albania, where he was left to make his way home to Germany, which he likened to being treated “like a piece of luggage.”

Mr. Masri, who had earlier been denied permission to come to the United States to attend the hearing, said he has not been able to find a job since his return to Germany. “Both my Arab and German friends keep their distance,” he said.

To add insult to injury, Mr. Masri has not been allowed to enter the US to attend the hearings even though he is not a terrorist.