Kidnapped and Tortured by the Land of the Free

Khalid El-Masri, a German national, took a casual vacation to Macedonia in 2003. Though an innocent man, Khalid was confused for a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, and the CIA requested he be handed over. Macedonia never held an extradition hearing for Khalid, nor was he afforded any of the rights of due process guaranteed to a free man -- a European citizen no less.

After being apprehended by Macedonian authorities at the behest of their masters at the CIA, Khalid was flown to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. Khalid was beaten, sodomized, frightened, and confused. His CIA captors informed him that he was in a land where the rule of law did not apply. 

For many months, Khalid was subjected to sleep deprivation, sexual degradation, beatings, and other forms of "enhanced" interrogation. It took nearly 40 days of hunger strike for the CIA finally to come to terms with the fact that Khalid's passport was genuine; he had already lost more than one third of his body weight by that point.

It was the Wikileaks diplomatic cables that proved beyond a doubt that Khalid was innocent. A 2007 diplomatic cable reads: "It was a mistake to take El-Masri." The cables also show that the US pressured the Germans into avoiding charges against the CIA, lest bilateral relations be heavily damaged. I guess the Germans would rather an innocent man be tortured than risk an economic war by the US.

Nonetheless, on the 13th of December, 2012, a European court of human rights found the CIA guilty of "torture." It represented the first time that CIA practices have been defined not as "enhanced interrogation," but torture as fact. 

Let us process the fact that a European court just found the CIA guilty of torturing, kidnapping, and indefinitely detaining an innocent European citizen. It goes without stipulating that Obama has consistently worked to cover-up the crimes of the Bush administration. In many ways, Obama has continued many of his predecessor's policies and has entrenched them as law.

Obama just gave the CIA carte blance to continue carrying out its drone war in Pakistan for a year, even in the face of the "playbook" of death that he is crafting to continue his extrajudicial assassination program. 

We can joke about North Korea kidnapping a South Korean to make a Godzilla ripoff, but what can we joke about El-Masri?

Kidnapped and Tortured by the Land of the Free

Khalid El-Masri, a German national, took a casual vacation to Macedonia in 2003. Though an innocent man, Khalid was confused for a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, and the CIA requested he be handed over. Macedonia never held an extradition hearing for Khalid, nor was he afforded any of the rights of due process guaranteed to a free man -- a European citizen no less.

After being apprehended by Macedonian authorities at the behest of their masters at the CIA, Khalid was flown to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. Khalid was beaten, sodomized, frightened, and confused. His CIA captors informed him that he was in a land where the rule of law did not apply. 

For many months, Khalid was subjected to sleep deprivation, sexual degradation, beatings, and other forms of "enhanced" interrogation. It took nearly 40 days of hunger strike for the CIA finally to come to terms with the fact that Khalid's passport was genuine; he had already lost more than one third of his body weight by that point.

It was the Wikileaks diplomatic cables that proved beyond a doubt that Khalid was innocent. A 2007 diplomatic cable reads: "It was a mistake to take El-Masri." The cables also show that the US pressured the Germans into avoiding charges against the CIA, lest bilateral relations be heavily damaged. I guess the Germans would rather an innocent man be tortured than risk an economic war by the US.

Nonetheless, on the 13th of December, 2012, a European court of human rights found the CIA guilty of "torture." It represented the first time that CIA practices have been defined not as "enhanced interrogation," but torture as fact. 

Let us process the fact that a European court just found the CIA guilty of torturing, kidnapping, and indefinitely detaining an innocent European citizen. It goes without stipulating that Obama has consistently worked to cover-up the crimes of the Bush administration. In many ways, Obama has continued many of his predecessor's policies and has entrenched them as law.

Obama just gave the CIA carte blance to continue carrying out its drone war in Pakistan for a year, even in the face of the "playbook" of death that he is crafting to continue his extrajudicial assassination program. 

We can joke about North Korea kidnapping a South Korean to make a Godzilla ripoff, but what can we joke about El-Masri?