Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake

Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition'

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 4, 2005; Page A01

In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country's interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA's Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.

Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.

The Masri case, with new details gleaned from interviews with current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials, offers a rare study of how pressure on the CIA to apprehend al Qaeda members after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has led in some instances to detention based on thin or speculative evidence. The case also shows how complicated it can be to correct errors in a system built and operated in secret.

The CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured an estimated 3,000 people, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. It is impossible to know, however, how many mistakes the CIA and its foreign partners have made.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301476.html?nav=rss_nation

Isn't rendition itself illegal? Or does the Post believe it's okay for the US to "render" anybody off the world's streets and imprison, possibly torture them, for months at a time, maybe even "disappear" them? The WP promotes this behavior, as long as the CIA got the right guy??

Thanks Dana Priest for enlightening readers to this US policy, but the title of your piece stinks.

this is truly sickening. cruel and unusual punishment by definition. its no wonder the europeans are up in arms about these 'secret cia flights'. its been said before, but i'll say it again, if even ONE american had this sort of crap done to them by some foreign government...

After meeting with the Cheerleader in Chief, one top spy would "return from the White House inspired and talking in missionary terms".

It's amazing that this story ever broke.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States admitted to German officials last year that the CIA had mistakenly imprisoned one of its citizens for five months but asked the German government to remain quiet, according to a U.S. media report on Sunday.

Daniel Coats, then the U.S. ambassador to Germany, told German Interior Minister Otto Schily in May 2004 that Khaled el-Masri had been wrongfully held but would soon be released, the Washington Post reported. He was later freed from a prison in Afghanistan.
The newspaper cited interviews with current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials. CIA officials told Reuters they had no comment.

The account comes as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prepared to visit Berlin and other European capitals amid allegations that the United States has committed abuses on the continent while fighting terrorism.
A German prosecutor is probing el-Masri's case but German officials who knew of his ordeal have remained silent, the Post said.

El-Masri, a German national who was arrested in Macedonia on December 31, 2003, has said he was handed to U.S. officials and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he was held in appalling conditions and interrogated as a terrorism suspect.>>>>snip

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2005-12-04T173254Z_01_SIB462025_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-CIA-GERMANY.xml

now WE are the ones throwing someone away in a 'camp' for no good reason!

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States acknowledged last year that the Central Intelligence Agency had wrongfully imprisoned a German man for five months, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The U.S. ambassador to Germany told the German interior minister that the United States would free Khaled al-Masri and asked the minister not to speak of the case, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation who spoke to the newspaper.

Al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German national, says he was seized while on vacation in Europe last year and then brought to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan where he was tortured and interrogated for suspected ties to the Al Qaeda terror group.

---

The Post's sources, who would only speak anonymously, said the United States wanted German officials to keep silent because of fears of exposing a covert U.S. program to capture terror suspects abroad and transfer them to other countries.

The CIA declined to comment, as did the U.S. Embassy in Germany, the German interior ministry and the German Embassy in Washington.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1133700724593&col=968705899037&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

against illegal search and seizure, and all that "other" stuff?

After all, we're big enough to (silently) admit when we made a mistake, even if we don't exactly apologize, and this is BOUND to be the only one, right?

What part of "kidnaping" don't they understand? (Fuhgeddabout the torture!)

No words.

Look at this--among their many mistakes:

One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said.

So...we college teachers could be diapered up, enema'd and shipped off to a foreign country: all because we gave a student a bad grade.

Is this a great country or what?




Cher

And dispose of the body. I wonder how many they HAVE murdered, just to avoid embarrassment.