Oh, crap...! Here we go again...! The U.S. holds another German citizen in Bagram without any solid evidence...

oferchrissake... don't we EVER learn (see khalid al masri and murat kurnaz)...? if i was a german high government official, i would be VERY PISSED...!

here's the lead-in...


A German soldier on patrol
near Bagram in Afghanistan

For the past three months, the United States military has detained a German citizen in Afghanistan on suspicion of terrorism. German security experts are convinced that the man, who has a history of psychological problems, is innocent.

[...]

An employee of the [ICRC] visited Gholam Ghaus Z., a German citizen, at the US air base in Bagram near Kabul, where he has been held under inhumane conditions since early January. The Americans believe that the 41-year-old man is a terrorist.

[...]

Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has carefully investigated the man, who is from Afghanistan but holds a German passport and lives in the western German city of Wuppertal. They have also investigated the unmarried man's family members and acquaintances, but have not found any evidence of extremist activities or dubious contacts with Islamists.

now, here's the REAL low-down...

Gholam Z. claims that he traveled to the Afghan capital Kabul to visit members of his widely scattered family in early January. While he was there, he heard that Western-quality goods could be obtained in a supermarket on the grounds of a US military base in Kabul, and that he, as a German citizen, could go shopping there without any problems.

Gholam Z. borrowed a relative's car to go on what a security expert has called his "fatal shopping trip," during which he planned to buy a razor, among other items. According to his version of events, he drove up to the military base on Jan. 4, showed the guard his German passport in its red cover and was then allowed to pass through several security checkpoints without incident.

But then US soldiers must have suddenly noticed Gholam Z., and he was detained. To the soldiers, it looked like a terrorist had managed to enter the well-guarded camp by posing as part of a group of visitors. It was the sort of suspicion that would automatically put guards on edge, as the number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan had increased substantially during the year 2007.

The Americans searched Gholam Z.'s clothing and found cash in various currencies, with a total value of about €1,000 ($1,580), as well as telephone cards from several countries. For the US military, these items were strong evidence that they were dealing with an Islamist terrorist who was part of an international network.

Gholam Z. was also carrying a brochure for London's Tower Bridge, fueling suspicions that the landmark could be the target of an attack.

US military interrogators spent hours trying to extract information from the presumed terrorist. They refused to believe his attempts at an explanation. He had not planned an attack on Tower Bridge, he told them, but had merely visited relatives in London and gone on a sightseeing trip that included the landmark. But the man's story seemed confused to the interrogators.

The US military interrogators also considered the suspect's justification for the foreign currency he was carrying to be implausible. He told them that he had stopped in Iran on the way to Afghanistan, where he had sold a large number of used mobile phones from Germany.

The soldiers locked him up and continued to interrogate him, but without yielding any results. They also refused to allow the German to contact a lawyer.

[...]

But totally clean apparently isn't clean enough for the US military in Afghanistan, which is under permanent threat of attack. The Americans dealt with the man from Wuppertal in the same way they had proceeded in other cases where innocent people had come under suspicion -- they kept Gholam Z. locked up.

lock 'em up and throw away the key and who cares about evidence, lawyers, speedy trials, or any other vestige of due process... it's the AMERICAN WAY...!

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Does claiming state secrets in the Jeppesen extraordinary rendition suit mean acknowledging it happened?

just askin'...

U.S. asks court to dismiss lawsuit on secret flights

The U.S. government asked a federal court late on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit against a unit of Boeing Co that charges the firm helped fly suspects abroad to secret prisons.

"Allowing plaintiffs' claims to proceed would risk the disclosure of highly classified information concerning the alleged 'intelligence activities, sources, and methods' of the CIA," said the filing, signed by Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholtz.

The American Civil Liberties Union first filed a complaint in May accusing Jeppesen Dataplan Inc of providing flight and logistical support to at least 15 aircraft on 70 "extraordinary-rendition" flights.

The complaint to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleged Jeppesen "falsified flight plans to European air traffic control authorities to avoid public scrutiny of CIA flights."

The ACLU filed the suit on behalf of five men who say the CIA had them flown to foreign prisons for interrogations and torture.

a little bit about jeppesen dataplan inc...

Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. describes itself this way:

"For more than 70 years Jeppesen has made it possible for pilots and their passengers to safely and efficiently reach their destinations. Today this pioneering spirit continues as Jeppesen delivers information and technology-based information management tool sets essential to navigation and efficient operations management to air, sea and rail operators around the globe. Jeppesen is a subsidiary of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services, a unit of Boeing Commercial Airplanes."

[...]

According to investigative journalist Claudio Gatti, Jeppesen was also involved in planning the flights used in the kidnapping of Khaled El-Masri:

"El-Masri says he was seized while on vacation in Macedonia and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured for five months before being released without charges. Gatti says El-Masri was rendered in the same Jeppesen-serviced plane as ACLU plaintiff Binyam Mohamed."

for all your extraordinary rendition needs...

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Supreme Court terminates el-Masri's suit

in my post yesterday, i concluded with this...

will accountability carry the day...?

evidently not... more props for bushco's continued defiance of the rule of law and any measure of legal redress...

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Khaled el-Masri's case moves to the Supreme Court. Will accountability carry the day?

Khaled el-Masri

i've been kinda sorta following el-masri's case (here and here) for a number of reasons... one, el-masri was abducted and subjected to rendition in macedonia in early 2004, during a short window of time between my first and my second (out of a total of 6) engagements there, so his story hits a bit close to home, as it were... two, germany, following italy's example (italy is trying the cia agents involved in abu omar's abduction in absentia), issued arrest warrants last june for the cia agents involved in his abduction... third, el-masri was released without ever being charged, and fourth, he is a german citizen... it would seem to me that if anyone is entitled to legal redress, it would be el-masri... last march, the u.s. court of appeals in richmond, va, ruled that el-masri was not entitled to redress because his lawsuit would expose state secrets... i was hoping the case would make it to the supreme court and it looks like that's happening this week...

The Supreme Court is set to decide as early as Tuesday whether the government can invoke the doctrine of "state secrets" to quash a legal claim that CIA bungling resulted in a man being abducted, imprisoned and tortured.

After five months of such treatment, CIA agents apparently realized that the man in custody, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was not the wanted terrorist Khalid al-Masri.

The case has attracted wide public attention in Europe, but El-Masri has been unable to gain a court hearing in the United States because the government has so far successfully invoked the argument that it cannot be taken to court when doing so might expose state secrets.

For his appeal to get an airing in the Supreme Court, four of the nine justices will have to agree to hear it. The justices have been closely split in cases that challenge the administration's handling of the war on terrorism.

That El-Masri is the victim of a case of mistaken identity does not seem to be in doubt.

the last paragraph in the following is particularly noteworthy...

Though the Supreme Court has not directly ruled on the state-secrets privilege in more than 50 years, the rule has been invoked regularly in the lower courts. The Bush administration has used it to block suits involving whistle-blowers, wiretapping and the firing of CIA agents.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union are urging the high court to take up El-Masri's case. They say the privilege has been transformed from a limited protection for military secrets to a broad shield for the government to hide behind when confronted with allegations of "grave executive misconduct."

It is particularly strange, they say, to allow the Bush administration to "invoke state secrets to protect the nation against the disclosure of information that the entire world already knows."

will accountability carry the day...? color me skeptical...

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Arrest warrants issued for CIA agents in Germany - another government responsive to its citizens

.


A CIA jet takes off at Palma de Mallorca

i've posted twice since february (here and here) on the trial that began on june 8 in italy for the 26 cia agents accused in the extraordinary rendition of abu omar...

[A] Milan court opened the trial of a group of CIA agents accused of kidnapping a radical Egyptian cleric — the first legal prosecution of one of the administration's most controversial counter-terrorism tactics.

Twenty-six American defendants, including two CIA station chiefs and an Air Force colonel, are being tried in absentia in the 2003 abduction from a Milan sidewalk of the cleric known as Abu Omar.

you might remember that the opening of the trial in milan coincided with bush's recent visit to that country...

In an uncomfortable coincidence for American officials that highlighted the ongoing strain in U.S.-Italian relations, the trial started just hours before Bush arrived in Italy for a day-and-a-half visit following the Group of 8 summit in Germany.

now, germany's gotten in the act, issuing arrest warrants for the cia agents suspected of kidnapping Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen, in Macedonia in January 2004, which i posted about this past march...

from der spiegel online...

The district attorney's office in Munich has filed international warrants with Interpol for the arrest of Lyle L., 51, and nine other CIA employees. Lyle L., also known as "Uncle Bud," a former member of the elite Green Berets combat unit, is alleged to have been part of a group of agents who kidnapped Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen, in Macedonia in January 2004 and flew him to Afghanistan via the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. A trained medic, Lyle L. was probably the one who administered sedatives to Masri on board the Boeing 737.

and, as you would expect from the germans, they're dead serious...

Officials in Washington have since realized that the German investigation is more than just a symbolic act. This week in Berlin, a group of senior officials from the interior, foreign and justice ministries will meet to discuss the sensitive issue of how the German government should handle the Munich petition for "arrest for the purposes of extradition." There is general agreement within the government in Berlin that the request should be promptly delivered to the Bush administration, which would be tantamount to an official request for the arrest of the men being sought.

meanwhile, official washington is whining...

At a recent lunch in the German Embassy in Washington, Michael Hayden, the new CIA director, complained about the "bottomless criticism" from Europe that the US government faces for abducting suspicious Islamists. One US diplomat calls Germany's approach the "German double standard."

as spiegel notes, germany could have stopped the issuance of the warrants, but they didn't because, unlike our government here in the u.s., they were concerned about the resulting public outcry...

The German government could have put a stop to the arrest warrants in the first stage. It would simply have had to refer to Paragraph 153c of the German Code of Criminal Procedure, which states that a legal proceeding can be terminated by official decree if this is in the "prevailing public interest." But a group of senior officials meeting at the Justice Ministry rejected a government veto, arguing that any government efforts to apply the brakes on the investigation would be too difficult for the public to swallow.

imagine that...! a government responsive to its citizens...! that makes two countries in one week... (see story about mexico's supreme court defending that country's constitution here...) what's the world coming to...?

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It's time the courts stopped allowing the CIA to remain unaccountable

if you've followed the el-masri story, you will remember the circumstances surrounding his kidnapping and extraordinary rendition... put yourself in his shoes... i can... having lived in macedonia for months at a time over the interval of the past four years, i can easily not only imagine it, i can visualize the very area because i've been there... at the time of his apprehension, i was spending the holidays in the states, but returned little more than a month after he was snatched, a case study in six degrees of separation...

A German citizen who says he was kidnapped and abused by the Central Intelligence Agency cannot seek redress in court because his lawsuit would expose state secrets, a United States Court of Appeals ruled yesterday in Richmond, Va.

There is substantial evidence that the plaintiff in the suit, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was subjected to the C.I.A.’s practice of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorism suspects are seized and sent for interrogation to other countries.

[...]

Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the A.C.L.U., said that the court’s decision had been “truly unbelievable” and that his group was “very seriously looking at all the avenues before us” for an appeal to the full appeals court or to the United States Supreme Court.

“Actions like this are reminiscent of third world countries,” Mr. Romero said. “It’s just not tenable to have the C.I.A. unaccountable for its most egregious violations of human rights.”

again, put yourself in his shoes... wouldn't you be crying out for justice, or even mere acknowledgment of who did what...? our government has been so unaccountable for so long and the courts are so inured to it, justice has ceased to be an operative word in our "justice" system...

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