By Daniel Konecky

The title of Khaled El-Masri’s Dec. 6 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times captured the horror of five months detainment and torture in one succinct sentence: America Kidnapped Me.

In December, the ACLU filed charges on behalf of El-Masri against former CIA Director George Tenet. The suit alleges El-Masri was the victim of wrongful imprisonment, torture and violations of his universal human rights.

His case has opened a window into the world of “extraordinary rendition.”

Extraordinary Rendition refers to a CIA practice of sending criminal suspects to foreign countries to be interrogated. Critics of the program contend this sort of deportation opens the door to methods of interrogation, namely torture, that are banned here on American soil.

Since September 11, 2001, many detainees have said they have been victims of extraordinary rendition. Nearly all say they have been tortured.

El-Masri is the first to press charges.

El-Masri is a German citizen of Lebanese descent. In December 2003 local authorities in Macedonia seized him after he had entered the country. El-Masri says he had come to Macedonia for a vacation.

“I was threatened with guns, not allowed to contact anyone,” he wrote in his LA Times op-ed. “Repeatedly questioned about my activities in Ulm (Germany), my associates, my mosque, meetings with people that had never occurred, or associations with people I had never met.

Upon being released, the CIA immediately detained him once again. El-Masri was manhandled, drugged and ferried onto a waiting plane. A day later he was in an American prison in Afghanistan, where El-Masri says he was tortured and interrogated about men he had never met and events to which he had no connection. This went on he says, for five months.

In May 2004, former National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice ordered El-Masri to be released. El-Masri says he was told that Rice referred to his detainment as a “mistake.” But he said American officials later denied that she said made that statement.

Again El-Masri boarded a plane from Afghanistan, one that flew him – and left him, in Albania.

“I was told we would land in a country other than Germany,” he wrote, “because the Americans did not want to leave traces of their involvement…After we landed I was driven into the mountains, still blindfolded. My captors removed my handcuffs and blindfold and told me to walk down a dark, deserted path and not to look back… I turned a bend and encountered three men who asked why I was illegally in Albania. They took me to the airport, where I bought a ticket home (my wallet had been returned to me)… I had long hair, a beard and had lost 60 pounds. My wife and children had gone to Lebanon, believing I had abandoned them. Thankfully, now we are together again in Germany. I still do not know why this happened to me.”

According to Washington Post writer Dana Priest, El-Masri was held because the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center al Qaeda unit had a hunch.”

The CTC, whose staff quadrupled in size to 1,200 following the Sept. 11 attacks, uses a rendition team to act on tips and leads.

Priest reports that the rendition team is composed of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists” that specialize in kidnapping people quickly and quietly.

“Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a daylong trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA’s own covert prisons.”

Supporters of renditions argue that they are one of the fastest and best ways to get possible terrorists out of circulation. A year before the Sept. 11 attacks, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet noted, “renditions have shattered terrorist cells and networks, thwarted terrorist plans, and in some cases even prevented attacks from occurring.”

But veiled in secrecy, the system of renditions is difficult to monitor. There is no outside tribunal to verify the veracity of CIA claims it uses to capture men like El-Masri. There is a term however for cases like El-Masri’s: “Erroneous renditions.”

Secretary of State Rice has acknowledged that mistaken renditions have been made carried out. But to date the program continues to exist.

El-Masri’s imprisonment has had many effects; from secretive top-level diplomatic missions to Germany (El-Masri’s country of citizenship) and direct orders from then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to the personal challenges El-Masri says he faced in finding his family and putting the pieces of his life back together.

El-Masri’s case demonstrates how thin evidence can lead to disastrous experiences. On the day of his release from prison in Afghanistan, El-Masri says the prison director told him why he had been held.

Apparently El-Masri “had a suspicious name.”

Sources

1. El-Masri’s legal statement: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition
2. Castle, Stephen. Belfast Telegraph. Europe ‘ignored detention of prisoners by the CIA.’ Jan. 24, 2006
3. Crewdson, John. Chicago Tribune. EU parliament launches inquiry into `renditions.’ Jan. 20, 2006
4. El-Masri, Khaled. Los Angeles Times. America Kidnapped Me. Dec. 18, 2005
5. Priest, Dana. The Washington Post. Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake; German Citizen Released After Months in ‘Rendition.’ Dec. 4, 2005