Tag: ghost air

The Bush Administration has admitted for the first time using a British territory in its transporting of Ghost Air prisoners as part of its secret rendition program.

The Bush administration is bracing for a diplomatic backlash after conceding it used British territory to transport suspected terrorists on secret rendition flights despite repeated earlier assurances the U.S. had not.

U.S. officials have sought to quell the fallout by apologizing to Britain for what they said was an "administrative error." The admission, however, may reopen a bitter debate between the United States and its allies over how the fight against terrorism should be conducted and compromise future cooperation.

The territory at issue: Diego Garcia.[More...]

Via Wired Magazine, a second sensitive Guantanamo document has been leaked and published by Wikileaks. It contains details about transporting detainees in secret renditions.

You can read it here (pdf).

The Washington Post reports on the CIA's Ghost Air prisoners. Some have been sent to Guantanamo, some were returned to their home countries (some of whom were never heard from again) and some are....missing.

Where are they? Who's keeping track? Human Rights Watch and Reprieve are trying to. According to the Post, HRW says at least 39 of those seized remain unaccounted for.

There's further reading today on this at Alternet: The Bush Era's Dark Legacy of Torture.

Khaled el-Masri, (also spelled al-Masri) the 42 year old German shoe salesman and father of five who was plucked off a street in Macedonia while on holiday, beaten and flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan where he was held for 5 months until the U.S. and Condoleeza Rice admitted he was picked up by mistake (a case of mistaken identity) has had his lawsuit against the U.S. rejected by the Supreme Court today. Reuters reports here and the AP here.

All of TalkLeft's coverage of el-Masri is accessible here. The ACLU filed the lawsuit on his behalf and has this webpage about extraordinary rendition.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed the lawsuit by wrongly kidnapped and detained (and allegedly tortured) Khaled El-Masri. The opinion is here.

The ACLU may appeal to the Supreme Court. In a statement today, the ACLU says:

Although El-Masri’s case has been discussed and investigated throughout the world, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that it could not be either discussed or reviewed in an American court because of the government’s invocation of the “state secrets” privilege.

“Regrettably, today’s decision allows CIA officials to disregard the law with impunity by making it virtually impossible to challenge their actions in court,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “With today’s ruling, the state secrets doctrine has become a shield that covers even the most blatant abuses of power.”

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A judge in Italy has ordered 26 people, most of them CIA agents, to stand trial on kidnapping charges. In 2003, Egyptian cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan was kidnapped in Italy and flown to an Egyptian prison where he alleges he was tortured.

Now the question is, will Italy seek extradition of the CIA agents from the U.S.

Lawyers say they have compiled thousands of pages of documents and testimony from Italian agents past and present, some of whom have acknowledged working with the US in planning the abduction. The trial is due to begin on 8 June.

Here's more on Ghost Air.

Via Scribe in the diaries:

Today, a prosecutor in Munich disclosed the existence of arrest warrants for 13 members of Ghost Air crews, relative to the kidnapping of Khaled al Masri from Macedonia to a US prison in Afghanistan. He was left to molder there for months while Condi and others debated exactly what to do with him, seeing as he really was the wrong guy. Ultimately, they had him flown back to and dumped off pretty close to the same spot he'd been kidnapped from. The US District Court has dismissed his tort suit, on the "state secrets" doctrine; he's appealing to the Fourth Circuit.

TalkLeft background on al Masri is here.