Aboard Air CIA

[DOGG]

Feb. 28 issue - Like many detainees with tales of abuse, Khaled el-Masri had a hard time getting people to believe him. Even his wife didn't know what to make of his abrupt, five-month disappearance last year. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.

Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh'."

Continues (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6999272/site/newsweek)

[banga]

how odd??

[Hippy Vindalou]

Didn't a certain someone say that only criminals were in Guantanamo and the like? Innocent people dont get arrested (or rather 'kidnapped') right?

The CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured an estimated 3,000 people, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. It is impossible to know, however, how many mistakes the CIA and its foreign partners have made.

Unlike the military's prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- where 180 prisoners have been freed after a review of their cases -- there is no tribunal or judge to check the evidence against those picked up by the CIA. The same bureaucracy that decides to capture and transfer a suspect for interrogation-- a process called "rendition" -- is also responsible for policing itself for errors.

The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what it calls "erroneous renditions," according to several former and current intelligence officials.

One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by al Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301476_pf.html

[Hairyman]

The House of Lords has just banned the admission of evidence acquired by torture from being admissable in a UK court. The Home and Foreign Offices will now have seriously consider the usefulness of evidence obtained from suspects outside of supervised UK jurisdictions.

[TheMightyPhill]

That is big news!
They reckon a whole heap of cases will be under review now.


(Apologies for being so non specific)

[Mandeville]

"One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by al Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said. "

Oh my god! I give uni students bad grades all the time... I used to worry that one of them would go postal and shoot me - now I can harbour a new fear. Yay!

You know, this is what all that due process, human rights stuff is about. It's designed to ensure that you can't just screw people's lives up utterly by randomly acusing them of some crime with no actual evidence. But this is war! We need no evidence! Bah!