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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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April 9th,
2008 - ACLU Petitions Panel in CIA Case |
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ACLU Petitions Panel in CIA
Case By Pete Yost Associated Press April 9, 2008 Washington - A German
citizen thwarted in the U.S. courts is taking his allegations of abduction
and torture at the hands of the CIA to the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights. On Wednesday, the American
Civil Liberties Union petitioned the commission on behalf of Khaled el-Masri,
saying the U.S. government should be called on to apologize for its treatment
of el-Masri and that the CIA's anti-terrorism rendition program should be
found unlawful. The commission,
headquartered in Washington, D.C., is an autonomous organ of the Organization
of American States of which the United States is a member. A German of Lebanese
descent, el-Masri says he was abducted in December 2003 at the
Serbian-Macedonian border and flown by the CIA to Afghanistan and abused as
part of the administration's rendition program. The Bush administration
invoked the state secrets privilege in el-Masri's case, shutting him out of
the U.S. court system. The Supreme Court last year refused to hear his case. The CIA declined to comment
about the petition filed on el-Masri's behalf by the ACLU. President Bush and others
have confirmed the existence of the CIA's rendition program, but the facts
central to el-Masri's claims "concern the highly classified methods and
means of the program," the government said. By refusing to hear
el-Masri's case, the high court passed up an opportunity to review the
doctrine of state secrets, which critics say this administration has used
more frequently than its predecessors. "This administration
has routinely abused the state secrets privilege to avoid any accountability
for egregious violations of the Constitution and international law," Ben
Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said in a
statement. El-Masri says the CIA
mistakenly identified him as an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Copyright © 2008 The
Associated Press. External link: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iKjryBnjCMUG_UXA4kN0AUc1IXQAD8VUKR300 |