El-Masri was the German shoe salesman who was plucked off the street in Macedonia by local authorities at the request of the CIA, which had mistaken him for a terrorist. He was (violently) transferred to CIA custody, shipped off to the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, and ultimately released with the U.S. saying basically, "So Sorry Charlie." His lawsuit against the U.S. was dismissed on grounds of the state secrets privilege, but it proceeded in the European Court of Human Rights, where his torture claims were upheld and he was awarded $60,000 Euros (for non-pecuniary damages. He didn't seek pecuniary damages.)
The European court decision and Open Society report present the same facts. From the Open Society report(emphasis added by me):
Khaled El-Masri, a German national, was seized by Macedonian security officers on December 31, 2003, at a border crossing, because he had been mistaken for an Al Qaeda suspect with a similar name. He was held incommunicado and abused in Macedonian custody for 23 days, after which he was handcuffed, blindfolded, and driven to Skopje airport, where he was handed over to the CIA and severely beaten.
The CIA stripped, hooded, shackled, and sodomized El-Masri with a suppository as Macedonian officials stood by at the airport. The CIA then drugged him and flew him to Kabul to be locked up in a secret CIA prison known as the “SaltPit,” where he was slammed into walls, kicked, beaten, and subjected to other forms of abuse.
El-Masri was held at the Salt Pit for four months and never charged, brought before a judge, or given access to his family or German government representatives. On May 28, 2004, he was flown on a CIA-chartered Gulfstream aircraft with the tail number N982RK to a military airbase in Albania called Berat-Kuçova Aerodrome and released without apology or explanation in Albania.
On December 6, 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly stated at a press conference — with then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice standing by her side — that the United States had accepted that it had made a mistake in El-Masri’s case, but senior U.S. officials traveling with Rice disagreed with Merkel’s interpretation.
El-Masri’s case was investigated by the CIA’s Office of Inspector General. Although the inspector general found that there had been “no legal justification for el-Masri’s rendition,” and faulted a CIA analyst and a CIA lawyer responsible for the operation, the analyst was promoted and the lawyer received only a reprimand. (The inspector general’s report is not publicly available).
On December 13, 2012, the European Court of
Human Rights held that Macedonia had violated El-Masri’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, and found that his ill-treatment by the CIA at Skopje airport amounted to torture. [added: The full opinion in here. A summary is here.]
Yesterday's report also describes the results of the CIA investigation on el-Masri:
On October 9, 2007,the CIA informed the Committee that it "lacked sufficient basis to render and detain al-Masri," and that the judgment by operations officers that al-Masri was associated with terrorists who posed a threat to U.S. interests "was not supported by available intelligence.
....The CIA director nonetheless decided that no further action was warranted against then the deputy chief of ALEC Station, who advocated for al-Masri's rendition, because "[t]he Director strongly believes that mistakes should be expected in a business filled with uncertainty and that, when they result from performance that meets reasonable standards, CIA leadership must stand behind the officers who make them." The notification also stated that "with regard to counterterrorism operations in general and the al-Masri matter in particular, the Director believes the scale tips decisively in favor of accepting mistakes that over connect the dots against those that under connect them."
Cheney, Hayden, Rodriguez, and the psychologists need to stop playing games with their denials. This report is just confirmation of so many earlier reports which show they knew, they lied and the program was shoddily run, poorly managed and useless in terms of results.
As I said, el-Masri is but one example. The court decision lists some of the amounts other countries have paid to abused CIA detainees when officials of those countries assisted the CIA. Maher Arar was paid $10 million by Canada. The U.K. paid $1 million to Binyan Mohammed. Sweden paid $450,000 to two detainees.
The CIA didn't just corrupt our values, it dragged other countries into the mud with it. Instead of making us safer, the CIA just put a bigger target on our backs.
Since no charges will be brought here, we can only hope that new charges are brought in other countries and arrest warrants are issued. (CIA agents have already been convicted in Italy. Charges were filed and are pending in Germany and were filed in Spain but dismissed.) These CIA agents and approving government officials should have to look over their shoulder every time they engage in international travel. They can ask Roman Polanski what it feels like. I think they deserve to live with the fear of arrest from international travel much more than he does.
