The ACLU’s Innocent Victim
Hat tip: David’s Medienkritik
Khaled El-Masri has become a cause celeb for the ACLU. They have even filed a lawsuit on his behalf against former CIA Director George Tenet.
“In a history-making lawsuit, the ACLU is challenging the practice on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an entirely innocent victim of rendition who was released without ever being charged.
The lawsuit charges that former CIA Director George Tenet violated U.S. and universal human rights laws when he authorized agents to abduct Mr. El-Masri, beat him, drug him, and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. The corporations that owned and operated the airplanes used to transport Mr. El-Masri are also named in the case. The CIA continued to hold Mr. El-Masri incommunicado in the notorious “Salt Pit” prison in Afghanistan long after his innocence was known. Five months after his abduction, Mr. El-Masri was deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania.”
But according to Focus Magazine (translated) he may not be so innocent as he and the ACLU claim.
The German-Lebanese Khaled el-Masri who was abducted to Afghanistan was the commando chief of a radical movement in Lebanon Focus reports.
The German-Lebanese commanded a 16-man armed group in Lebanon according to information from German intelligence. That was conveyed to FOCUS from the 273 comprehensive secret report of the German security authorities for the parliamentary oversight committee (PKG).
According to it, El-Masri was a leading member of the radical movement Al-Tawhid (spelled “el-Tawhid” in German) at the start of the 1980s. The organization stood close to the Muslim Brotherhood ideologically and above all fought the Alavite sect in Lebanon that they saw as un-Islamic. The area of operations for El-Masri and his troop was supposed to be Tripoli.”
Hey, for all we know the man could be completely innocent, and the CIA just plucked him from a bus at random in the middle of the night in a different country by complete mistake, bad information, etc. Let the ACLU carry on with their case. But this new information is sure to bring up new questions into the case. It seems to me that this case is a lot more complicated than the ACLU and the media are reporting. What this new information seems to imply to me is that it was not unreasonable to hold el-Masri while he was being investigated. Let’s not forget that he was released.
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Posted by Jay on March 1, 2006 9:35 pm
» Filed Under ACLU
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Syndicate Me
Is it me or does this guy look like ‘ol Moammar from Libya?