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

Posted by Joshua Holland at 9:57 AM on November 29, 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.

Speaking of CIA paramilitaries disappearing Europeans, the EU Parliament released a draft resolution that makes for an interesting read (you can grab a PDF here). It builds on an earlier investigative report that showed conclusively that the CIA flew 1,245 secret flights into European airspace, ferrying uncounted numbers of suspected -- that's a key word, I think -- terrorists to countries where they were held incommunicado and subjected to torture.

Highlights:

…The programme of extraordinary rendition is an extra-judicial practice whereby an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases, involves incommunicado detention and torture …

…[The Parliament condemns] extraordinary rendition as an illegal and systematic instrument used by the United States in the fight against terrorism… [and] condemns, further, the acceptance and concealing of the practice, on several occasions, by the secret services and governmental authorities of certain European countries…

…Participating in the interrogation of individuals who are victims of extraordinary rendition represents a deplorable legitimisation of that type of illegal procedure, even where those participating in their interrogation do not bear direct responsibility in the kidnapping and detention of the victims…

…The practice of extraordinary rendition has been shown to be counterproductive in the fight against terrorism and that, in some cases, extraordinary rendition in fact damages and undermines regular police and judicial procedures against terrorism suspects …

That gets to the heart of what's wrong with so many of the arguments in favor of shredding the Constitution or the central tenets of international law: it is so often counter-productive and actually makes us less safe -- a reality that eludes many of the blood-and-guts types on the hysterical right.

Joining them, of course, is Tony Blair, and I imagine that Bush's Poodle will have the Foreign Office working overtime trying to water down the language of the draft. After all, it contains heresies like this:

…The fight against terrorism cannot be won by sacrificing the very principles that terrorism seeks to destroy, notably, the protection of fundamental rights must never be compromised … terrorism must be fought by legal means and must be defeated while respecting international and national law and with a responsible attitude on the part of governments and public opinion alike …

The resolution also "condemns the illegal pursuing of Italian journalists investigating the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar and the tapping of their telephone conversations." That oart of this story -- the one that's been playing out in Italy -- has been absolutely riveting. If you haven't been following it, see this piece by Stephen Grey and Elisabetta Povoledo in the International Herald Tribune, and this AlterNet story by Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere.

Anyway, as I've written before, the idea that the U.S. and its allies are engaged in some sort of global "Clash of Civilizations" is especially unserious given the fact that our tactics violate the underlying principles of Western liberal thought, and that the entire Western world unambiguously rejects our leadership. Oh well.

Let me wrap up with a bit of good news for those of a civil libertarian bent, via Reuters:

A federal judge in Los Angeles, who previously struck down sections of the Patriot Act, has ruled that provisions of an anti-terrorism order issued by President George W. Bush after September 11 are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins found that part of the law, signed by Bush on September 23, 2001 and used to freeze the assets of terrorist organizations, violated the Constitution because it put no apparent limit on the president's powers to place groups on that list.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought against the Treasury Department in 2005 by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Collins also threw out a portion of Bush's order which applied the law to those who associate with the designated organizations.

"This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists, an authority president Bush then used to empower the Secretary of the Treasury to impose guilt by association," said David Cole of the Washington-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

"The court's decision confirms that even in fighting terror, unchecked executive authority and trampling on fundamental freedoms is not a permissible option," he said in a statement.

Here, again, we have a court upholding the government's right to take steps to stop terrorists, but rejecting the argument that Bush's executive branch is the government. I'm not sure why so many people seem to have such a hard time understanding that, but good for District Judge Audrey Collins for not being among them.

Tagged as: bush, war on terror, extraordinary rendition

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.