A Story We Should All Know
I received this letter by e-mail today from the American Civil Liberties Union and wanted to share it with everyone because I feel that it's very important. It’s hard to imagine that the government of the United States of America is going around kidnapping innocent people and making them disappear into a system where they have no rights. America you had better wake up and take back your country.
The case of our client Khaled El-Masri is one we should all be watching carefully. Yesterday, he stood up in a courtroom to challenge the Bush administration's use of "extraordinary rendition," abduction, detention and interrogation in secret overseas prisons.
While it is a credit to our system of justice that Mr. El-Masri can now demand accountability from his CIA kidnappers, all of us must ask, how have we let our country stray so far from its ideals?
Mr. El-Masri's story is a frightening catalogue of abuses. A father of six, he was forcibly abducted in Macedonia while on vacation, handed over to the CIA and flown to a secret interrogation center in Afghanistan where he was beaten, drugged and repeatedly denied legal counsel. After two months, CIA operatives informed director George Tenet that they were holding an innocent man. But it still took two more months before he was released -- flown in secret to Albania and left alone on a hillside in the middle of the night.
People need to hear his story, and the agencies and private companies responsible must face real justice for their violations of U.S. laws as well as universal human rights laws.
In a legal maneuver that is now familiar, the government is trying to use the veil of secrecy to avoid accountability for its actions. But yesterday, we argued that the government's official recognition of the program and information already available about this case show that the lawsuit does not jeopardize national security and must be allowed to continue.
Our government would rather you didn’t hear his story. The last time Mr. El-Masri tried to come to the U.S. -- to hear his own court case -- he was denied entry because he did not have a visa, even though German citizens don’t actually need visas to enter the U.S. This week, Mr. El-Masri witnessed his court proceedings and will also be meeting in person with members of Congress to share his story. As he told the Washington Post today, “I never thought badly of the United States. I do think badly of the foreign policy aspects and the sitting government.”
You can help.
Learn more about El-Masri v. Tenet.
Watch Mr. El-Masri and his attorneys tell the story in their own words.
And tell others about the case, and the unthinkable acts perpetrated in our name - and now being deliberately covered over through an abuse of the "state secrets" privilege.
The ACLU is appalled that our government sanctioned and carried out these atrocious actions -- and that it continues to shirk responsibility by hiding behind state secrets. These are not the actions of a proud nation, instead they diminish us as a people.
We will continue the fight both to seek justice for Khaled El-Masri and to end the practice of extraordinary rendition. Thank you for making those efforts possible.
Another good article about Khaled El-Masri can be found at: 'They beat me from all sides'
What exactly is extradordinary enndition? Find out by visiting Wikipedia.
Here's a story about another innocent man that the United States kidnapped:
Italy Seeks Arrests of 13 in Alleged Rendition
By Craig Whitlock and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 25, 2005; Page A01
MILAN, June 24 -- Italian authorities said Friday they have issued arrest warrants against 13 American intelligence operatives, charging that they kidnapped a radical Islamic cleric as he walked to a mosque here two years ago, held him hostage at two U.S. military bases and then covertly flew him to Cairo. He later said he was tortured by Egyptian security police.
Read entire article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/24/AR2005062400484.html
