European court condemns CIA in kidnapping case

Defendant Khaled el-Masri waits for the verdict in a courtroom of the court in Memmingen, southern Germany, on Tuesday, March 30, 2010. / Felix Kaestle,AP Photo/dapd

PARISA European court issued a landmark ruling Thursday that condemned the CIA's "extraordinary renditions" programs and bolstered those who say they were illegally kidnapped and tortured as part of an overzealous war on terrorism.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that a German car salesman was an innocent victim of torture and abuse, in a long-awaited victory for a man who had failed for years to get courts in the U.S. and Europe to acknowledge what happened to him.

Khaled El-Masri says he was kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, mistaken for a terrorism suspect, then held for four months and brutally interrogated at an Afghan prison known as the "Salt Pit" run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He says that once U.S. authorities realized he was not a threat, they illegally sent him to Albania and left him on a mountainside.

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'Rendition' Victim Speaks Out

"I was deprived of sleep," El-Masri told CBS News in 2006, in his only interview during his first and only visit to the United States. "I only had one blanket in my cell, and these were very cold days in Afghanistan at that time of year. The food and the water were awful. You wouldn't even give that to your pets."

At the time, he said he still had "confidence in the American justice systems and its courts."

The European court, based in Strasbourg, France, ruled that El-Masri's account was "established beyond reasonable doubt" and that Macedonia "had been responsible for his torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the U.S. authorities in the context of an extra-judicial rendition."

It said the government of Macedonia violated El-Masri's rights repeatedly and ordered it to pay 60,000 euros ($78,500) in damages. Macedonia's Justice Ministry said it would enforce the court ruling and pay El-Masri the damages.

U.S. officials closed internal investigations into the El-Masri case two years ago, and the administration of President Barack Obama has distanced itself from some counterterrorism activities conducted under former President George W. Bush.

But several other legal cases are pending from Britain to Hong Kong involving people who say they were illegally detained in the CIA program. Its critics hope that Thursday's ruling will lead to court victories for other rendition victims and prevent future abuses.

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The case focused on Macedonia's role in a single instance of wrongful capture. But it drew broader attention because of how sensitive the CIA extraordinary renditions were for Europe, at a time when the continent lived in fear of terrorist attacks but was divided over the Bush administration's methods of rooting out terrorism.

Those methods involved abducting and interrogating suspects - without court sanction - in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A 2007 Council of Europe probe accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.

The CIA declined to comment on Thursday's ruling.

El-Masri's lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, said he hoped the ruling would inspire El-Masri to resume contact with his lawyers and family, which he broke off after he was sentenced to prison in 2010 for assaulting the mayor of the German town of Neu-Ulm. The Lebanese-born El-Masri, who is scheduled for release from a Bavarian prison next year, is a "broken" man after unsuccessfully seeking justice in U.S., German and Macedonian courts, Gnjidic told The Associated Press.

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[quincytodd]

It's great to see that for one time the European Court did the right thing instead of kowtowing to Washington as usual! The C.I.A. sorely needs to be held accountable for their illegal activities just like everyone else!

[ProfessorJerome]

Like Nazis and Romans before them, the CIA lets the ends justify the means. Perhaps that is what the powerful can do, so long as they hold that power. However, when they fall, their own acts of horror against their enemies becomes their own punishment. So it has been, so it shall be. Professor H

[mjlewis6]

A witness in his defense of the kidnapping and torture claims would be US VP Cheney who defended the CIA rendition practices and the interrogation torture techniques (both violative of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of POWs and civilians in a war zone or from a war zone). Mr. Cheney went further in his remarks as a civilian out of office to defend those practices. Would be nice to hear him say that under oath in court either in the US or abroad in Europe inasmuchas Mr. Cheney as VP would only testify before Congress NOT UNDER OATH and with President Bush as to the events leading up to the attack of 9/11. Whatever else can be said of Mr. Cheney's policies, the dead cannot testify as to their effectiveness, but those who survive and are credible witnesses in court, perhaps the Obama Administration can get the US Senate to go along and radify US membership in the World Court to be able to properly bring to justice those who commit crimes against their own people as well as internationally, similar to Serbian President Milosevic, who tried ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Bosnia. Would be nice to have Mr. Cheney put his hands on a Bible and testify as to what he knew and when he knew it.