(Cross Posted from The Blog Roundup).
It comes as no particular surprise to me that the Pentagon is considering creating El-Salvador style hit squads to carry out assassinations and kidnappings in Iraq. As I have discussed previously, the CIA is already kidnapping suspected "terrorists" (on sometimes tissue-thin evidence), and transporting them to other countries for interrogation and torture. Stories about this practice, called "rendition" are starting to find the light of day, at least in other countries. As the following article describes, a series of explicit allegations to this effect have been made by a German citizen who was detained while on vacation in Macedonia.
(More after the break):
German's Claim of Kidnapping Brings Investigation of U.S. Link by Don van Natta Jr. and Souad Mekhennet, NY Times
On the afternoon of Dec. 31, 2003, Khaled el-Masri was traveling on a bus headed for the Macedonian capital, Skopje, for a weeklong vacation.
When the bus reached the Serbia-Macedonia border, Masri said, he was asked the usual questions. But also, said Masri, a German citizen, the border guards confiscated his passport.
The bus moved on and Masri was ordered to stay behind. A few hours later, Masri, a 41-year-old unemployed car salesman, said he was taken to a small, windowless room and was accused of being a terrorist by three men dressed in civilian clothes but carrying pistols.
"They asked a lot of questions -- if I have relations with Al-Qaida, Al-Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood," recalled Masri, who was born in Lebanon. "I kept saying no, but they did not believe me."
It was the first day of what Masri said would become five months in captivity. In an interview, he said that after being kidnapped by the Macedonian authorities at the border, he was turned over to officials he believed were from the United States. He said they flew him to a prison in Afghanistan, where he said he was shackled, beaten repeatedly, photographed nude, injected with drugs and questioned by interrogators about what they insisted were his ties to Al-Qaida.
He was released without ever being charged with a crime.
Perhaps most significantly, the German authorities not only believe his story, they are investigating it thoroughly, including the alleged links with the US:
The German police and prosecutors have been investigating Mr. Masri's allegations since he reported the matter to them last June, two weeks after his return to Germany.
Martin Hofmann, a senior national prosecutor in Munich who handles terrorism cases and is in charge of the Masri investigation, and another official, a senior organized crime investigator in southern Germany, say they believe Mr. Masri's story. They said investigators interviewed him for 17 hours over two days, that his story was very detailed and that he recounted it consistently. In addition, the officials said they had verified specific elements of the case, including that Mr. Masri was forced off the bus at the border.
This is by no means an isolated incident. Similar cases have been reported by several individuals, and of course there are very likely many others who are currently still in US custody (officially or otherwise) who are unable to speak out due to their continued incarceration.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this case is an example of profiling at its worst. The real crime here is that in all likelihood, Khaled el-Masri is guilty of nothing more than having the wrong name and being in the wrong place at the wrong time:
His lawyer, Mr. Gnjidic, said he thought that his client had been confused with the Sept. 11 suspect Khalid al-Masri, because that man is believed by American authorities to have had contact with Mr. bin al-Shibh and Mr. Atta and to have been partly responsible for directing them to a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. It was there that the two men met Osama bin Laden, who enlisted them for the Sept. 11 mission.
The fact that Khaled el-Masri is a Lebanese-born German citizen, not an Egyptian Al Qaeda operative (as is the case with al-Masri) seems to not have occurred to his interrogators. Of course, if he had been given access to a lawyer, a trial or even his own family, such details might have convinced them they were torturing the wrong guy.
I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that this kind of abduction is pretty clearly illegal under international law, and certainly immoral by any standard (to say nothing of the torture involved). Of course it fits right in with the current US government's policies over Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and so on; policies which deny either due process, the "quaint" provisions of the Geneva Convention, or even basic human rights to anyone they choose to believe is associated with terrorism in any way.
I sincerely hope that my name isn't suspiciously similar to that of a suspected international terrorist, just in case someday I happen to cross a frontier somewhere in the world...
- Trendar