The US government is now asserting its right to whisk a German citizen off the street on foreign soil and fly him to a secret location where he is tortured. In a US District Court of law in Virginia, the US Department of Justice merely needs to invoke the state secrets privilege:
For at least the fifth time in the past year, the Justice Department yesterday invoked the once rarely cited state secrets privilege to argue that a lawsuit alleging government wrongdoing should be dismissed without an airing, this time in the case of a German citizen seeking an apology and monetary compensation for having been wrongfully imprisoned by the CIA.
Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Joseph Sher said yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the government cannot confirm or deny the allegations made by Khaled al-Masri, who sources have said was held by the CIA for five months in Afghanistan. His allegations, Sher contended, "clearly involve clandestine activity abroad." Therefore, he said, "there is no way that the case can go forward without causing the damage to the national security."
The judge in the case has yet to decide on the motion, but undoubtedly he is under massive pressure to give in to the Dept. of Justice. Actually, I do not see how the US can "neither confirm or deny" al-Masri’s allegations, since a high level US official – former ambassador to Germany Daniel Coats – confirmed in a classified letter to the German Interior Minister that the US had abducted al-Masri by mistake:
Der frühere US-Botschafter Daniel Coats teilte am 31. Mai 2004 dem damaligen Bundesinnenminister Otto Schily unter dem Siegel der Verschwiegenheit mit, dass die CIA mit El Masri den Falschen ergriffen habe.
What happened to al-Masri and others is not a "state secret". The whole world knows about the illegal torture renditions that have destroyed the international standing of the United States, no matter how long the State Department stonewalls any inquiries. It is too bad that Chancellor Angela Merkel does not speak out forcefully on behalf of a citizen of her country whose rights have been grossly violated. But then she might risk hurting the feelings of her new best friend George W. Bush.
Torture renditions Folter menschenrechte CIA Germany
