I wanted to share this following article with you guys. Its long, longer than probably any other post, and ive typed it all out (good practise for the fingers but please excuse any typo's etc) because i think it is increadably inportant.. Its powerfull and distrubing. But i think given Ghostsnipers recent comment that "you reap what you sow" extreamly relevant to current events. Its a long read but most definatly worth a few minutes of your time.
Lemme know whatyou think!
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A man is walking alone along a mountain path in the darkness. he is carrying a suitcase. he seems frightened, tired and confused. he has long hair and a long beard, but the are untidy, as if he did not grow them voluntarily. He turns a bend and meets three men carrying Kalashnikovs.
The man shows them his passport. It indicates that he is a German citizen, born in Lebanon, called Khaled el-Masri. Using poor English, he tells them that he does not know where he is. They tell him that he is on the Albanian border, close to Serbia and Macedonia, and that he is there illegally since he doesn't have an Albanian stamp in his passport.
The story that el-Masri tells them by way of explanation , on this evening in late May 2004, is extraordinary: a story of how an unemployed German car salesman from the town of Ulm went on a New Year's holiday to Macedonia, was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled and blindfolded and flown to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but controlled by Americans. Five months after first being seized, he says, still with no explanation or charge, he was flown back to Europe and dumped in an unknown country which turned out to be Albania.
What reallly happened? With no way to prove his story, el-Masri's account remains in the balance, a terrifying snapshot of America's "war on terror". It is certain that he returned home to Ulm from Albania in May 2004 and that he was taaken off a bus from Germany at the Macedonian border on New Year's eve 2003. The only person who ahas offered a clear explanation for what happended in the five months in between is el-Masri himself. Yet that may change. The German authorities are now taking his allegations very seriously. They are subjecting a sample from el_masri's hair to radioistope analysis, which cna reveal, down to a particular country , the source of a personas food and drink over a period of time. Discussions are also under way about bringing to Germany two men whom el-Masri has identified as being with him in the Afghan prison, and who were also subsequently released. the fact that the German authorities do regard Ulm as an area of potentially dangerous radical Islamic activity - a number of premises were raided and alleged Islamic activits were arrested on Wednesday - only emphasise the concern that Germnay has over the el-Masri case.
So far th eUS authorities have neither confirmed nor denied el_Masri's story, althought German investigators first requested information about the cae in autumn. The FBI office in th eUS embassy in Berlin did not return calls yesterday.
In a conversation lasting more than four hourse, el-Masri conveyed a pwerful impression of sincerity: if he story is not true, he must be an actor of genius. He broke down in sobs as he described the moment he was abducted by masked men and put on a plane, excused himself to vomit as he recalled the filthy water he was given to drink in jail, and brightened as he described the hours before his return to Germany. Often he would pick up a pen and sketch the layout of a room or building.
If true, the abduction would add to our understanding of a pattern of US behavour frightening in its implications both for America and for the rest of the world. the former director of the CIA, George Tenet, told the US 9/11 Commision last year that even before September 11 the US had abducted more than 70 foreigners it considered terrorists - a process Washington has declared legal under the label "extraordinary rendition".
An investigation by the Washinton Post las tyear suggested that the US held nine thousand people overseas in an archipelago of known prisons (such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq) and unknown ones run by the Pentagon, the CIA or other organisations. But this figure does not include others "rendered" to third-party governments who then act as subcontractors for Washington, enabling the US to effectivly torture detainees wile technically denying that it carries out torture.
El-Masri's ordeal began, he says, when he decided to escape, for one week over New Year, the stress of living in a single room in Ulm as the unemployed father of a family of six. On a friends's recommendation he bought a cheap bus ticket to Skopje, capital of Macedonia, intending to find a hotel when he got there.
The bus left the borders of the EU and crossed Serbia without incident. then, at the Macedonian border, at 3pm, el-Masri was called off the bus. Now 41, he has lived in Germany for 20 years, the last 10 as a citizen. "I didn't feel bad, " he says,. "i just thought it was a mistake."
He was taken to a room with a table and chairs where four men whom he took to be Slavic searched his luggage and questioned him in poor English, asking him about links to Islamic organisations. Several hours later, flanked by armed police, he was driven to a city he assumes was Skopje and esorted to the hotel room where he was to spend the next few weeks. "I asked if I was arrested," says el-Masri. "They said:' Can you see handcuffs?'"
El-Masri was kept prisoner in the room for 23 days: Macedonian civilian police were constantly present, and he was subject to repeated interrogations about his links to Islamic organisations - he say s he has none - and about the mosque in Ulm where he worships.
After about 10 days, a Macedonian Mr Nice appeared. "He said it was taking a long time, too much time - lets' make an end to it, and let's make a deal. "we have to say you are a member of al-Qaida... then we'll put you on a plane and take you back to Germany'. I refused, naturally. It would ahve been suicide to sign."
But el-Masri was accused of having been to a aterror training camp in Jalalabad, of having a fake passport, and being in reality a citizen of Egypt. On the evening of January 23, the was handcuffed, blindfolded, put in a car and told he was going to Germany. he was driven to a a place where he heard the sound of a plane, then heard the voice of one of the Macedonians saying he would have a medical examination.
"I heard the door being closed," says el-Masri. "and then they beat me from all sides, from everywhere, with hands and feet. With knives or scissors they took away my cloths. In silence. The beating, i think , was just to humiliate me, to hurt me, to make me afraid, to make me silent. They stripped me naked. I was terrified. They tried to take off my pankts. I tried to stop them so they beat me again. And when i was naken i heard a camera." El-Masri breaks down as he recalls the moment when the men carreid out an intrusive anal search.
He wsa dressed in a nappy, a short-sleeved, short-legged suit and a belt. His feet were shackled and his hands were chained to the beslt. His ears were plugged and ear defenders placed over them and a clp put on his nose. A hood was put over his blindfold. With his arms raised painfully high behind his back, he was driven to an aircraft where he was thrown down on to a bare metal floor, chained and bound, and given an injection. He was dimply aware of a landing and takeoff and a second injection before the plane landed again and he was put into the boot of a car.
El-Massri arrived in what he later found to be his cell by being pushed violently against th wall, thrown to the floor, havin eet placed on his head and his back and having his chains removed. The cell waws to be his home for the next four months. From the graffiti on the wall - in Arabic script, but not Arabic - and the Afghan dress of the guards, he deduced that he was in Afghanistan. There was nothing in the cell except a blanket, a filthy plastic mat and a bottle of tainted water so fvile that the memory of it makes him literally gag.
El-Masri soon discovered that th eprison, though technically Afghan, was run from behind the scenes by the US. His first encounter with an American was with a masked individual who spoke English with what el-Masri believes was a strong American accent. He had a palestinian translator. The American took a blood sample and photographed el-Masri naked again.
" I asked him if i could have fresh water, and he said Its' not our problem, its's a problem of the Afghan people.". I said: "Afghanistan doesn't have planes to kidnap people in Europe and bring them here, so it's not hte problem of the Afghan people."
By whispering through the door, and exchanging messages on pieces of toilet paper, el-Masri found out a few details about his fellow prisoners: two Saudi brothers of Pakistani origin who had been imprisoned for two years, two Tanzanians, a Pakistani, a Yemeni, and several Afghans. (Two of the prisoners have been traced but won't be identified yet for fear of putting their lives at risk)
El-Masri say s the first of many interrogations was carried out by a masked man with a south Lebansese accent, with seven or eight silent observers in black masks listening in. "He said: 'Do ou know where you are?' And I answered: 'Yes, I know , I'm in Kabul.' So he said: 'It's a country without laws. And nobody knows that you are here. do you know what this means?'"
Repeatedly he asked the same questions, challenging his identitiy, accusing him of attending terrorist training camps. Some of te interrogators, el-Masri belives, were American.
After a month he met two unmasked American s who the other prisoners reffered to as the doctor and the boss. The Doctor was a tall, pale man in his sixties with grey collar - enth hair. The boss was younger with red hair and blue yes, about 5"10, and wore glasses. Then in Marth El-Masri and the other prisoners began a hunger strike. After 27 days of starvation he was taken in chains one night to meet the Americans and a senior Afghan.
The boss told him he had to get Washington's permission to help him, but was clearly angry, saying: "he shouldn't be here. He's in the wrong place." " I had the impression that the Doctor thought I wasn't guilty, and had sent a report saying so even after the second interrogation," says el-Masri. Yet he was taken back to his celll, where e continued his hunger strike. On the 37th day he was force fed nutrients through a tube stuffed up his nose.
They brought a native German speaker to the prison. "I asked him: 'Are you from the German authorities?' He said: 'I do not want to answer that question.' When i asked him if the German authorities knew that i was there, he asnwered: 'I can't answer this question (the Prosecutor says the German security services do not admit to any knowledge of an agent visiting el-Masri in prison.)
It was more than a week before he was finallly releasd from the prison; the German told him one of the obstacles to his speedy releas was the American's determiniation not to leave any evidence that he had ever been there. He was flown to Albania in what he thinks whas a small passenger jet, blindfolded and in plastic handcuffs.
"It was a crime, it was humiliating, and it was inhuman, although i think that in Afghanistan i was treated better than the other rpisoners. Somebody in the prison told me that before i came someobody died under torture. Those responsible have to take responsibility, and should be held to account.
Hofmann and his investigative team now have two tasks: to find evidence supporting or disproving el-Masri's story and, if they can show its is true, to work out who to charge with kidnapping. But how do you charge a government? "For the moment," says Hofmann, "I have to believe the story, becasue there is absolutly no evidence that it is not true".
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