A horror buried by the Times: CIA "tortured and sodomized" a German citizen, rules European court from Mark

Crispen Miller

Compare the Guardian's coverage, the horror duly noted in the headline and the lede, with the Times storywhich ran on an inside page, with the horror discreetly noted, only once, in the fifth paragraph (of ten), and in a quoted fragment of the court's decision. So most Times readers would have missed a datum that, to put it mildly, doesn't jibe with the heroic image of the CIA that hits us everywhere we look, from TV, movies and pop fiction to the loud supportive arias routinely belted out by politicians and, of course, the CIA itself. In the second Times item below, for example, Michael J. Morrell, Acting Director of the CIA, responded to the voluminous new Senate report on CIA abuse of terror suspects with a paternal pat on the collective back of the entire CIA work-force, claiming to be "very proud of of the courage and commitment each of you brings to the mission of protecting our country from the many threats and other national security challenges it faces." Since Morrell excepted no one from that institutional salute, he must be "very proud" as well of those bad apples (assuming that they are) who either did the actual torturing and sodomizing of Khaled el-Masri (as it appears they did), or "merely" supervised it. And if he's "very proud" of such behavior, he must believe it somehow serves "the mission of protecting our country from the many threats ... it faces"which, of course, do not include a CIA that rapes and tortures with impunity. Having such a CIA is bad enough; but it is even worse to have a press that largely keeps the people in the dark about it.

CIA 'tortured and sodomised' terror suspect, human rights court rules
Landmark European court of human rights judgment says CIA tortured wrongly detained German citizen

Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Thursday 13 December 2012 13.54 EST

The European court of human rights has ruled German citizen Khaled el-Masri was tortured by CIA agents, the first time the court has described treatment meted out by the CIA as torture. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/AP

CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday. In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations. Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA "rendition team" at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan. It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture. "The grand chamber of the European court of human rights unanimously found that Mr el-Masri was subjected to forced disappearance, unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition outside any judicial process, and inhuman and degrading treatment," said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. He described the judgment as "an authoritative condemnation of some of the most objectionable tactics employed in the post-9/11 war on terror". It should be a wake-up call for the Obama administration and US courts, he told the Guardian. For them to continue to avoid serious scrutiny of CIA activities was "simply unacceptable", he said. Jamil Dakwar, of the American Civil Liberties Union, described the ruling as "a huge victory for justice and the rule of law". The use of CIA interrogation methods widely denounced as torture during the Bush administration's "war on terror" also came under scrutiny in Congress on Thursday. The US Senate's select committee on intelligence was expected to vote on whether to approve a mammoth review it has undertaken into the controversial practices that included waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity, beatings and sleep and sensory deprivation. The report, that runs to almost 6,000 pages based on a three-year review of more than 6m pieces of information, is believed to conclude that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" adopted by the CIA during the Bush years did not produce any major breakthroughs in intelligence, contrary to previous claims. The committee, which is dominated by the Democrats, is

likely to vote to approve the report, though opposition from the Republican members may prevent the report ever seeing the light of day. The Strasbourg court said it found Masri's account of what happened to him "to be established beyond reasonable doubt" and that Macedonia had been "responsible for his torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the US authorities in the context of an extrajudicial 'rendition'". In January 2004, Macedonian police took him to a hotel in Skopje, where he was kept locked in a room for 23 days and questioned in English, despite his limited proficiency in that language, about his alleged ties with terrorist organisations, the court said in its judgment. His requests to contact the German embassy were refused. At one point, when he said he intended to leave, he was threatened with being shot. "Masri's treatment at Skopje airport at the hands of the CIA rendition team being severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation had been carried out in the presence of state officials of [Macedonia] and within its jurisdiction," the court ruled. It added: "Its government was consequently responsible for those acts performed by foreign officials. It had failed to submit any arguments explaining or justifying the degree of force used or the necessity of the invasive and potentially debasing measures. Those measures had been used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr Masri severe pain or suffering in order to obtain information. In the court's view, such treatment had amounted to torture, in violation of Article 3 [of the European human rights convention]." In Afghanistan, Masri was incarcerated for more than four months in a small, dirty, dark concrete cell in a brick factory near the capital, Kabul, where he was repeatedly interrogated and was beaten, kicked and threatened. His repeated requests to meet with a representative of the German government were ignored, said the court. Masri was released in April 2004. He was taken, blindfolded and handcuffed, by plane to Albania and subsequently to Germany, after the CIA admited he was wrongly detained. The Macedonian government, which the court ordered must pay Masri 60,000 (49,000) in compensation, has denied involvement in kidnapping. UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, described the ruling as "a key milestone in the long struggle to secure accountability of public officials implicated in human rights violations committed by the Bush administration CIA in its policy of secret

detention, rendition and torture". He said the US government must issue an apology for its "central role in a web of systematic crimes and human rights violations by the Bush-era CIA, and to pay voluntary compensation to Mr el-Masri". Germany should ensure that the US officials involved in this case were now brought to trial.

Court Finds Rights Violation in C.I.A. Rendition Case

By NICHOLAS KULISH Published: December 13, 2012

BERLIN A German man who was mistaken for a terrorist and abducted nine years ago won a measure of redress on Thursday when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that his rights had been violated and confirmed his account that he had been seized byMacedonia, handed over to the C.I.A., brutalized and detained for months in Afghanistan.
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Sebastian Widmann/Agence France-Presse Getty Images

Khaled el-Masri during a court appearance in 2010.

In a unanimous ruling, the 17-judge panel, based in Strasbourg, France, found that Macedonia had violated the European Convention on Human Rights prohibition on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and ordered it to pay the

man about $78,000 in damages. It was the first time a court had ruled in favor of the man, Khaled el-Masri, 49, in a case that focused attention on the C.I.A.s clandestine rendition program, in which terrorism suspects were transported to third countries for interrogation. The decision, which Amnesty International hailed as a historic moment and a milestone in the fight against impunity, is final and cannot be appealed. The C.I.A. declined to comment. A lawsuit against the United States filed on Mr. Masris behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union was dismissed in 2006 on the grounds that it would expose state secrets. The group filed a petition in 2008 at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2008; the United States government has yet to respond. Mr. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was pulled off a bus at the Macedonian border on New Years Eve in 2003 after guards confused him with an operative of Al Qaeda who had a similar name. He was taken to a hotel in the capital, Skopje, and locked in a room there for 23 days. His detention, along with the threat that he would be shot if he left the hotel room, amounted on various counts to inhuman and degrading

treatment, the ruling said. When he was handed over to the C.I.A. rendition team at the Skopje airport, he was severely beaten, sodomized, shackled and hooded in the presence of Macedonian officials, the ruling said, a treatment that amounted to torture. He was then flown to Afghanistan, where he spent more than four months in captivity before being flown to Albania and dropped on the side of a road. His German lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, said his mental state had suffered not only from the abuse but also from the nine years of constantly fighting, being called a liar, a terrorist, an Islamist, a hard-liner. Mr. Masri has broken off contact with his lawyers while serving a prison sentence on unrelated charges involving a 2009 assault on the mayor of Neu-Ulm in Bavaria. Mr. Gnjidic said he had written to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany asking the government to appeal to Washington on Mr. Masris behalf. Macedonia was only the henchman of the great powers, Mr. Gnjidic said. The question is: What is with the big fish, with Germany, with the U.S.A.? All he ever wanted was to know why this was done to him and an apology.

Jamil Dakwar, the head of the A.C.L.U.s human rights program, said that it had been an uphill battle to persuade the Obama administration to hold officials accountable under international law for Mr. Masris mistreatment, but that the case before the commission gives the Obama administration the opportunity to acknowledge the egregious violations against Khaled, offer an official apology and reparation. He called the European courts ruling historic and said it sends the message to European nations that they have a heightened obligation to investigate their complicity and cooperation with the illegal C.I.A.extraordinary rendition program. Kostadin Bogdanov, a lawyer who represents Macedonia before the court, said Macedonia would pay the damages and perhaps take other actions in light of the ruling. They include reopening the Masri investigation and amending laws regarding criminal procedures or their implementation, he said. James A. Goldston, executive director at the Open Society Justice Initiative, who argued the case before the court, called the ruling a comprehensive condemnation of the worst aspects of the post-9/11 war-onterror tactics that were employed by the C.I.A. and

governments who cooperated with them. In another rendition case on Thursday, lawyers for a former Libyan dissident said he and his family had accepted a $3.5 million settlement from the British government, according to The Associated Press. The dissident, Sami al-Saadi, had sued the British government and its spy agency, MI6, saying that he had been abducted in Hong Kong in 2004 and sent to Libya, where he spent years in prison and was tortured. The rest of his family his wife and four children were also sent to Libya against their will. Chris Cottrell contributed reporting from Berlin, and Scott Shane from Washington.
NATIONAL BRIEFING | WASHINGTON

C.I.A. Director Reacts to Report Critical of Detainee Interrogations

By SCOTT SHANE Published: December 14, 2012

Responding on Friday to the completion of a highly critical Senate report on the C.I.A.s former interrogation program, the agencys acting director expressed support for officers who are on the front line of the fight against terrorism. The director, Michael J. Morell, said in a statement to the C.I.A.s work force, I want to be clear that the agencys senior leaders and I are very proud of the courage and commitment each of you brings to the mission of protecting our country from the many threats and other national security challenges it faces. Mr. Morell said the agency would prepare comments on the still-classified, 6,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee report by Feb. 15 and expressed appreciation for a statement from the

committees chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, that the report is open to revision.