Martelen 62

'Black-hooded CIA paramilitaries tried to "disappear" German national.

By Joshua Holland Posted on November 29, 2006, Printed on November 30, 2006

I often give the commercial media a hard time, but it's important --
if we want a better media -- to give them a bit of praise when they
earn it. So let me offer kudos to the Washington Post's Dana Priest
for not mincing words in this lede:

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.
Masri is now trying to use the courts to get a modicum of justice for
that treatment -- a radical idea, apparently, in the aftermath of 9/11:

…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.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District agreed with the
government in May.

If they have their way this time, the pale Justice Department lawyers
swaying back in their chairs before the three judges of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit would prohibit any judge and any
jury anywhere from ever hearing the arguments in Masri's six legal
pleadings and 40 exhibits, more than 1,000 pages in all. Much of the
evidence was unearthed by German prosecutors and European Parliament
investigators.
"Pale Justice Department lawyers swaying back in their chairs " --
there's a word-picture for you.

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.

Read the whole thing -- it's quite a tale.'

Lees verder: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/