Macedonia kidnapped a German citizen called Khalid al-Masri (previously, previously) and sent him to the CIA, mistaking him for a similarly named terror suspect; the CIA tortured him in Afghanistan and held him even after they realized they had the wrong name.
When they finally released him, they dumped him by a roadside in Albania with $euro;14.5K and told him to remain silent. His lawsuit against the US government was dismissed on state secrecy grounds; eventually a European court ordered Macedonia to pay him a further €60K.
The CIA officers involved in the kidnapping, torture and coverup were not disciplined by the CIA because the CIA Director believed “the scale tips decisively in favour of accepting mistakes that over-connect the dots against those that under-connect them.”
By the CIA’s own reckoning, at least 25 others were kidnapped and tortured by the Agency due to mistaken identity.
In one of the first reactions to the Senate report by the German government, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday condemned excesses in the US renditions.
“What was then considered right and done in the fight against Islamist terrorism was unacceptable and a serious mistake,” he told Bild newspaper.
US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that “when we make mistakes, we admit them” of the CIA’s use of torture, promising to stop such methods being used in future.
But the NGO Human Rights Watch said that the CIA officials and members of the government who approved and oversaw the torture programme should be brought before the courts.
As well as the abuse directed at al-Masri, dozens of other prisoners were subjected to brutal beatings, kept awake for up to 180 days on end and almost drowned during “waterboarding”.
CIA tortured German it mistook for a terrorist [The Local]
(via Reddit)
(Image: Detainees at Camp X-Ray, public domain)
