"State Secrets"

[icarus]

Now this is downright creepy.

El-Masri v. U.S., 06-1613: Court rejects 'alleged' CIA kidnap victim.

"State secrets" have been invoked in order to block the lawsuit of a German man of Lebanese descent kidnapped through mistaken identity and tortured by the CIA.

I've heard of this guy. He was let go (just dropped off in the middle of nowhere) once the CIA realized he wasn't the man they wanted. Four months later.

The US has a "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terrorism suspects are captured and taken to foreign countries for interrogation. In this case, the German man was picked up in Macedonia and taken to Afghanistan.

U.S. presidents used the state secrets privilege six times from 1953 to 1976, according to OpenTheGovernment.org. Since 2001, it has been used 39 times, enabling the government to unilaterally withhold documents from the court system, the group said.

Free country?

Comments

[feanna.livejournal.com]

"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack
each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."
- George W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003



And you're right, it IS creepy.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That quote. It's just... will history decide that he's a liar, or that his mouth operates independent of the rest of his body?

[feanna.livejournal.com]

Well he said something about a hundred years of frienship with Japan once...
If I recall correctly there's actually a whole book about the absolute rubbish things he has said.

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely correct, Commander-In-Chief, Sir.

Give us back our damn country, you traitor.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I want a special ceremony at the end of his term, one involving a 30' spring-loaded rubber boot that punts him over the White House lawn.

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

So what's the State Secret? That whoever kidnapped the man was fucking incompetent? Sorry, but I'm afraid that once's out already.

Though there are indications that members of the German government might be responsible for El-Masri not getting out of Afghanistan earlier.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No shit, really? What, they knew?

The article goes on to say that the "state secrets" defense was created back in the 50s when three widows sued the US government to find out what happened to their husbands. The government said the men were flying top secret equipment and that defense was accepted.

Decades later, it was learned that there was no top secret equipment on board.

The defense has been bullshit from the very beginning. It's being used to block illegal wiretap cases now.

Icarus

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

Secretary of State Schilly was informed by the CIA pretty early on and that was still under Chancellor Schröder, who opposed the war in Iraq and made a huge thing about that during his re-election campaign.

El-Masri claims that one of the interrogators in Afghanistan was a Federal Criminal Police Office (German version of the FBI) agent but that has never been proven. It's all hugely complicated, even more so because because El-Masri actually used to be member of an armed fundamental islamic group. Which still doesn't make ok what the CIA did to him.

According to the German wikipedia entry, the district court of Munic issued arrest warrants for the 13 CIA operatives who were involved in the kidnapping and the Federal Ministry of Justice made them into international warrants. Since then Spanish authorities have identified 10 of the agents and if they show up in any of the 186 countries that are members of Interpol (except for the U.S.) they might get arrested and extradited to Germany.

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

And I'll take pretty much any defense that uses the words State Secrets as bogus. Just a handy dandy way to weasel out of taking responsibility for your fuck-ups.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

I have no words, just little shivers down my spine. That poor man.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My first thought is... my god. That's just evil.

My second... how do you make amends for something like that? What else has the US done in this "war on terrorism"?

[lherelenfeline.livejournal.com]

[headdesks] and then Im asked why I'm not staying here....

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I don't wonder at it. I've considered it many times over the past few years. But I do wonder... where are you going? :)

[lherelenfeline.livejournal.com]

Canada. I have this unhinged dream of living in a cabin near the Alskan border, doing my cross jurisdictional law thing from the Canadian side, doing to work by snowmobile.... Maybe owning a pub called The Mucky Duck on the side.

[julia-fractal.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, it's terrifying indeed!

Maher Arar's case was similar to El-Masri's, did he get any coverage in the American press? Arar is a Syrian-Canadian who was wrongfully suspected of having terrorist connections, detained in the US, then imprisoned and tortured for a year in Syria. After a lot of legal wrangling, he managed to get $10.5 million and an apology from the Canadian government and the RCMP, but nothing out of the US administration.

Wikipedia has a thorough overview of the case here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think I heard about that one.

How can we ever come back from going so far off the edge? I feel like I just reached up on top of my head and realized I was wearing the black hat, much to my surprise.

Icarus

[ansku]

O.o