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

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.