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Gold9472
02-20-2005, 11:50 AM
Aboard Air CIA
The agency ran a secret charter service, shuttling detainees to interrogation facilities worldwide. Was it legal? What's next? A NEWSWEEK investigation.

By Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball and John Barry
Newsweek

Feb. 28 issue - Like many detainees with tales of abuse, Khaled el-Masri had a hard time getting people to believe him. Even his wife didn't know what to make of his abrupt, five-month disappearance last year. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.

Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh.' "

No one's laughing these days, least of all the CIA. NEWSWEEK has obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on terror. And the Boeing's flight information, detailed to the day, seems to confirm Masri's tale of abduction. Gnjidic, Masri's lawyer, called the information "very, very important" to his case, which is being investigated as a kidnapping by a Munich prosecutor. In what could prove embarrassing to President Bush, Gnjidic added that a German TV station was planning to feature Masri's tale ahead of Bush's much-touted trip to Germany this week. German Interior Minister Otto Schily recently visited CIA Director Porter Goss to discuss the case, and German sources tell NEWSWEEK that Schily was seeking an apology. CIA officials declined to comment on that meeting or any aspect of Masri's story.

The evidence backing up Masri's account of being "snatched" by American operatives is only the latest blow to the CIA in the ongoing detention-abuse scandal. Together with previously disclosed flight plans of a smaller Gulfstream V jet, the Boeing 737's travels are further evidence that a global "ghost" prison system, where terror suspects are secretly interrogated, is being operated by the CIA. Several of the Gulfstream flights allegedly correlate with other "renditions," the controversial practice of secretly spiriting suspects to other countries without due process. "The more evidence that comes out, the clearer it is that there's been a stunning failure of accountability," says lawyer John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

krsjuan87
02-20-2005, 12:15 PM
there was an article in playboy about a year ago about this guy who is being held without representation. the article said that they had this guy in solitary confinement and he hasnt been aloud a day in court or to talk with legal counsel...and this is an american citizen....what the fuck is going on with this country!!!!

Gold9472
02-20-2005, 12:27 PM
there was an article in playboy about a year ago about this guy who is being held without representation. the article said that they had this guy in solitary confinement and he hasnt been aloud a day in court or to talk with legal counsel...and this is an american citizen....what the fuck is going on with this country!!!!

I'm moving to Canada.

somebigguy
02-20-2005, 01:45 PM
Lots of hemp in Canada!!!

princesskittypoo
02-20-2005, 06:11 PM
I'm moving to Canada.
they can do that even if you're a canadian citizen... they do it to people who aren't u.s. citizens much more frequently than not.

danceyogamom
02-21-2005, 12:12 AM
they can do that even if you're a canadian citizen... they do it to people who aren't u.s. citizens much more frequently than not.

with non-citizens all they have to do is classify them as pow's and they can keep them indefinitely.

amman254
12-10-2005, 06:44 AM
Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh.' "




i can't hardly believe that this was allready in newsweek this far back in february, and the media here and the public are just now responding, and it is breaking into the public eye. i guess this just goes to show how much unpopular news will be left to hope die, untill it can just be no longer avoided, becuase too many people are talking about it....

that's the reason we keep buggin' everybody about 911...right?

anyway, now it's hitting mainstream here, that not only was masri kidnapped from the cia, but that german (bnd?) people were active as well, which is a whole new ball game for the situation here...



Near the beginning of May, I was brought into the interrogation room to meet an American who identified himself as a psychologist. He told me he had traveled from Washington D.C. to check on me, and promised I would soon be released. Soon thereafter, I was interrogated again by a native German speaker named “Sam,” the American prison director and an American translator. I was warned at one point that as a condition of my release, I was never to mention what had happened to me, because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret.



http://aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition/22201res20051206.html

read this for a complete statement from el masri