If you can't be sure you have "disappeared" the right person, you can't be sure that you're torturing the right person, as the U.S. has admitted privately to Germany in the case of German national Khaled Masri. According to this article in the Sunday, December 4, 2005, Washington Post, Masri was disappeared by the United States for five months because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit "had a hunch." According to lawsuit filed by Masri, the CIA drugged him and tortured him before it determined that he was not the person they were looking for.
Given a free hand by the Bush administration, the CIA has a number of ongoing public relations disasters, including the use of "black sites" where individuals "disappeared" by the CIA have been detained in Eastern Europe, kidnapping charges against 22 CIA operatives involved in the disappearance of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka Abu Omar) from Italy on February 17, 2003, and the Swedish government inquiry into the CIA disappearance of Egyptian Mohamed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza on December 18, 2001.
Masri was held for 23 days by Macedonian authorities, but not at a government site, before he was disappeared by the CIA in January 2004. He was released in late May 2004 in Albania.
Posted by mike at December 6, 2005 2:19 PM | TrackBack