The Wronged Man (re: U.S. secret prisons) [View All]

[MountainLaurel]

Is it facism yet?

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.

Instead, on Tuesday, Masri finds himself sitting in an American courtroom so elegant that even his experienced lawyers are commenting on its beautiful dark wood and graceful chandeliers. Dressed in white shirt sleeves and a modest maroon vest, 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.

snip

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. Countless other reporters in the United States and Europe have been told the same by unnamed government officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801810.html