The Daily Background

If you’re a long time reader, you might remember that I wrote a detailed piece on a man named Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen who had been illegally kidnapped by the CIA, and tortured for months because they mistook his identity for that of a suspected terrorist. With the support of the ACLU, he planned to sue the CIA for the horrible (and entirely illegal) abduction and torture he experienced. Washington Post now reports that his lawsuit has been thrown out of court for unsettling reasons:

A federal judge yesterday threw out the case of a German citizen who says he was wrongfully imprisoned by the CIA, ruling that Khaled al-Masri’s lawsuit poses a “grave risk” of damage to national security by exposing government secrets.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria acknowledged that Masri “has suffered injuries” if his allegations are true and that he “deserves a remedy.” Sources have said Masri was held by the CIA for five months in Afghanistan because of mistaken identity. Masri says he was beaten, sodomized and repeatedly questioned about alleged terrorist ties.

But Ellis said the remedy cannot be found in the courts. Masri’s “private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets,” the judge wrote in dismissing the lawsuit filed last year against former CIA director George J. Tenet and 10 unnamed CIA officials.

In other words, even though this man was torture for months, and illegally held, justice can’t be served because to serve justice would ‘let the terrorists win.’ What utter bullshit. They can’t let the case go to court because then it would be acknowledging that the CIA’s secret illegal black rendition program (i.e. kidnapping and torture) exists. And we already know it does, thanks to the Washington Post and ABC News, who uncovered the story last year. This is absolutely a travesty of justice. His ACLU lawyer and the judge had this to say:

“This is doubly insulting,” Wizner said. “Everyone knows that Mr. al-Masri was a mistaken victim of the rendition program. He is now a victim of the misuse of the state-secrets privilege.”

[…]
Ellis said that his ruling was not a commentary on the substance of Masri’s allegations but that if they are true, “all fair-minded people . . . must also agree that [Masri] has suffered injuries as a result of our country’s mistake and deserves a remedy.”

But if the government even responded, the judge wrote, it could compromise intelligence sources and methods. “Such a revelation would present a grave risk of injury to national security,” Ellis concluded.

To even let this man have a shot at justice, to even let him have his day in court, a chance to prove that he had been wronged– would be a risk to national security. What complete and utter bullshit. The German government has even concluded that Masri is telling the truth after investigating what he said. As his layer states, everyone knows that this man has been wronged horribly. This is such a disgusting perversion of justice, by the so-called Justice Department. Full article

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog