When mistaken identity leads to torture
The US may torture, but it does not apologize—or allow any compensation to innocent victims. Why? Because we can, and we don’t care a fig about world opinion. Here’s some of the story of Khaled El-Masri, kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured for weeks because the CIA thought he was Khaled Al-Masri.
If you have seen the fine albeit disturing movie Brazil, you’ll recall the travails visited upon the protagonist due to an errant fly causing a typo on an official document. Somewhat the same scenario played for El-Masri—in fact, the more I think about it, the more the incident resembles the movie plot.
Here’s an article in Salon that quotes El-Masri:
On New Year’s Eve 2003, Khaled el-Masri, now 48, was seized at the border of Serbia and Macedonia by Macedonian police who mistakenly believed that he was traveling on a false German passport. (Reportedly, he was mistaken for a suspected terrorist with the name al-Masri.)
He was detained for over three weeks before being handed over to the CIA and rendered to Afghanistan. Shortly after Khaled’s release from Afghanistan, staff within both the CIA and the U.S. State Department reported the mistaken identity of their detainee to senior personnel, and German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents allegedly involved in Khaled’s abduction. However, cables disclosed by WikiLeaks reveal that United States officials heavily pressured Germany to abandon the case. A February 2007 cable quoted the deputy U.S. chief of mission in Berlin as advising a German diplomat to “weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the United States” if the agents were prosecuted. The German government withdrew the warrants five months later. The CIA analyst who advocated Khaled’s abduction and argued against his release was reportedly later promoted to chief of the Global Jihad unit hunting al-Qaida members.
Currently incarcerated in Germany (on unrelated charges), Khaled has stopped speaking about his experiences. His narrative is drawn from sworn and published statements made in the past. The excerpt below describes Khaled’s arrest by Macedonian police and his subsequent detention in Skopje, Macedonia. Khaled was held in a hotel room in Skopje for 23 days before being transported by the CIA to Afghanistan.
I asked them if I was under arrest and they said that I wasn’t, asking me if I saw any handcuffs on my wrists. They carried out another search of all my belongings. After this, three of them began interrogating me again. These interrogations were conducted in English, despite the fact that I have only a very basic grasp of the language. The three men asked many questions all at once, speaking at me and firing questions from all sides of the room. The interrogation lasted until at least 3 a.m. the next morning.
The men conducted similar such interrogations for the next three days. They observed my every move at all times. Even when I went to the toilet they asked me to leave the door open, although it was located in the same room where I was staying. When I was exhausted and tired of answering their questions, and after having been locked in this hotel room all this time, I demanded a translator. Then I asked to call the German embassy, a lawyer and my family. All my requests were refused.
At one point I became so angry that I demanded to be released and attempted to leave the room by force. During this particular incident, we all raised our voices, each of us speaking in our own language. Communication was clearly impossible. One of the men pulled out his firearm and held it level with my head. The other two placed their hands on their holsters in a threatening manner.
* * *
The watch was divided between nine men; they changed shifts every six hours. On the fifth day, a man with a bag appeared. He had sheets of paper and fingerprint ink. He also had a camera and took a few photographs of me: right profile, left profile and then frontal.
After about seven days, . . .
Continue reading. The Obama Administration has worked hard—and succeeded—at blocking El-Masri at every turn from getting any sort of compensation at all for what was done to him by our government. He has not even been given an apology, nor will the Obama Administration even admit that an error was made. Apparently, the administration believes that it would be a sign of weakness to admit an error, so they are brazening it out on the position that what was done to him was done on purpose and for a good reason. They just won’t tell us what the reason was. But watch your back: you could be next. (There has been no punishment for anyone (other than El-Masri) for what was done, and Obama has personally pledged that he will see that no one is ever punished for torturing innocents or even murdering prisoners, so long as it was done under official guidance and orders. There seems to no longer be any such thing as an illegal order. This opens a door I would rather have been kept shut.)
