Khaled el-Masri was a German citizen who was kidnapped from Macedonia and transported to Afghanistan where he was tortured and asked about Al-Qaeda. It turns out that no charges were ultimately pressed and he was released after five months. A German court is now seeking the 13 kidnappers of el-Masri and to have them answer to his lawsuit.

Personally, I'm of the persuasion that the leaders who ordered rendition should answer to this. The underlings were merely carrying out orders and thus, their bosses deserve to be terminated in their positions and if possible, extradited to Germany so that this man may face those who had him tortured without merit. In this respect, I follow the Nuremburg defense 100%. I do however, believe that this fast and loose policy of extra-rendering is a haphazard method and in no way, safeguards people like el-Masri from abuse. There should be protocols such as being charged, not being tortured, or not being handed over to a nation with a primitive understanding of how to treat inmates.


Questions for debate:

1.)If Masri's kidnappers or the bosses who authorized the kidnappers are not handed over, what message would that send to nations who later on have individuals accused of the same things?

2.)If you were kidnapped by a foreign nation, transported to another for the purpose of being tortured, and had no charges pressed against you,not even trumped up ones-what legal recourse and compensation should you receive?

3.)To what extent should blame go to the kidnapper's employers? How far does the Nuremburg defense of "I was just following orders" go to excuse people for what they did?

Should prosecutors/police who mistakenly imprison people be prosecuted? The fact is that numbers of people are detained every day that aren't convicted of crimes. This could range from petty larceny to murder, and sometimes people spend YEARS in prison and can't sue the judges, the arresting officers, or the prosecutors. Innocent people are convicted, should the jury be held liable?

In the case of CIA operatives in foreign nations, I can't see how we'd ever hand them over. First of all, I can't imagine that this man didn't have some ties to terrorism or a reason to be picked up, as the most powerful intelligence agency in the world wouldn't pick up a man without reasonable cause.

Secondly, if the CIA operatives were told to detain this man, it was within orders. The only reason they should not follow orders is if they konew what they were doing was wrong for some reason. Frankly, intelligence like this is a group effort. It's necessary to trust your counterparts, as your efforts save the lives of Americans.

Let's be frank. Unfortunately, in issues of this nature Europeans are far more liberal and forgiving. This is exactly why France and England (and even Germany) have serious issues with militant Islamic populations. It IS necessary for covert operations of CIA operatives to remain in Western Europe. We should probably pay this guy off or make him go away. It sounds harsh, but the real fact of the matter is that if he had NO ties, not even dotted lines, we wouldn't have kept him for that period of time. These aren't amateurs or people working on a shoe string budget that discard attention to detail.

While I don't agree with everything you've said I think you're mostly right.

There's a weird thing about renditions. The US is always trying to give the renditionee back to their home country before they ship them off and the home country always refuses. Look into it.

Nebraska, I couldn't get immediate access to the article (you have to sign in and log on), so I read the Wikipedia article regarding this case.

1.) Probably that you can get away with extraordinary renditions. Personally I think the U.S. is providing a very, very bad example to the rest of the world in this regard and its conduct sets dangerous precedents.

2.) If that foreign nations thinks it is okay to kidnap and deport people who they think could possibly be a possible threat to their national security (completely disregarding the innocent untill proven guilty principle), and if that nation is unwilling to even make their apologies if it turned out that mistakes were made and will not start a formal investigation or legal procedure, then there is only one thing one could do: sue that nation before the international tribunal. But then again everybody knows that its authority and its power is only limited and the chance of succes is minimal.

3.) To the full extent. All the involving parties should held responsible for their moral and ethical misconducts. Especially when it turns out an innocent person has suffered as a result of these actions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


I really cannot understand why you are still defending the U.S. intelligence officials while it has been proven, without a doubt, that the detainment and rendition of Khalid el-Masri was completely unjustified and illegal.

link

link

link

Even the CIA Director has acknowledge the fact el-Masri was innocent:
link

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps the U.S. sometimes tries to give the renditionee back to their home country (as could be arguably the case for Arar), but this was definitely not the case for Khalid El-Masri. He was born in Kuwait to Lebanese parents, before he became a German citizen, but none the less he was deported to the "salt-pit", a covert CIA interrogation center in Afghanistan.

I am mistaken. I read this:
incorrectly in the linked/citied article.

Again- there are obviously things you don't understand about intelligence and matters of this nature. Frankly, I would never be surprised if this man actually has known terrorist ties, but the CIA sent him back to monitor him. OR, it's plausible that the information uncovered by this man is far to important to give up to the world. The CIA isn't a band of loosely disciplined NYPD detectives that make mistakes that last months. If they detained the man, chances are he had business ties, personal relationships, or other "dotted line" relationships with terrorist-related people and/or organizations. It's far too expensive and risky to pick up a foreign national and torture him... then RELEASE him if he'd been of no value. Do you see the logic? It seems silly doesn't it. Flimsy and unprofessional. This is the same organization that helped to beat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and you think they picked up a guy on no grounds? Seriously. That's ludicrous. I'd venture to state that there are a number of things we don't know.

Well, the rest of the world needs to get wise and start kidnapping our secret police and start trying them in the Hague.

It is amazing to me, folks like Aevens, who don't trust goverment to say, oh, run a medical system or post office, is pretty okay with goverment officials having no oversite and operating in an unsupervised manner in this. You think the same folks that brought you welfare is competent to start torturing poeple willy nilly when ever the urge arises? Why all this trust in these folks, when you won't trust them to run a single payer medical system, out and in the open- but you are okay with them doing all kinds of crazy things in secret, with no oversite at all?

I mean, you are trusting the far more dangerous of the two entities here.

You guys claim it was a "mistake" GW made in going into Iraq from "bad intel"- yet, you trust the intell NOW?

It is amazing that conservatives, all yelling about "big goverment" are quite okay when these guys say "trust us, we are with the goverment"

Aevans, I am really sorry, but what you just wrote is just ... bizarre. So the CIA, who have admitted that they confused this man with another well-known terrorist because their names resemble a lot, who have admitted that this man should not have been imprisoned ( former general counsel Jeffrey Smith even stated that" It's wrong morally, it’s wrong legally," [...] "And it violates the basic principles of the United States.") and yet you want me to believe that this was part of some big CIA plan so that they could monitor him further, or that they felt that the information uncovered was far to important to give up to the world? And you think I will give this explanation any credibility? Without any credible sources or facts to counter this whole story, your story remains a figment of your own imagination.



There is a good chance that we don't know a number of things. In all probabilty the CIA is working very hard to cover this whole mess up as good as they can. And indeed it is ludicrous that the CIA picked up a man on no grounds.... but unfortunately it happened! Because of a "hunch" of the head of the al Qaeda division of the CIA's Counter-terrorism Center this man had gone through a horror-scenario. Because of bad-intel, bad decissions and stupid mistakes this man is perhaps traumatized for the rest of his live. Perhaps you can not accept the fact that the CIA makes terrible mistakes, but unfortunately for you and mister El-Masri it does.

The intel was the same for all in 2002 precisely because we had gutted out field INTEL forces in the previous administration and before,

The CIA is not peffect but they do work with every foreign intel agency and they are our first and best source of Intel on terrorists today.

Foreign Network at Front of CIA's Terror Fight
The CIA has established joint operation centers in more than two dozen countries where U.S. and foreign intelligence officers work side by side to track and capture suspected terrorists and to destroy or penetrate their networks, according to current and former American and foreign intelligence officials.
The network of centers reflects what has become the CIA's central and most successful strategy in combating terrorism abroad: persuading and empowering foreign security services to help. Virtually every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- more than 3,000 in all -- was a result of foreign intelligence services' work alongside the agency, the CIA deputy director of operations told a congressional committee in a closed-door session earlier this year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5111702070.html

Okay- you are comfortable if a family member of yours was picked up by the CIA and taken off to be rendered? You trust thier "intel" enough with your life and family?

Remember- this is the very reason we have these checks and balances in goverment- to prevent secret service types from spiriting folks off and torturing them.

I do not approve of my goverment acting like Saddam Hussien, even by proxy.

The US goverment has made it a habit of kidnapping innocent civilians and taking them somewhere to be tortured, by proxy of course.

This makes the US goverment as guilty as the goverments that torture them, and the US, a bunch of war criminals no better than Saddam Hussien.

What moral grounds do we have yelling about human rights abuses of other countries when we, as a nation, are perfectly willing to torture innocent civilians?

I see you are totally cool with the goverment having say over your life Ted- when do you plan on voting for universal health insurance- after all, the goverment runs things so perfectly, we can trust them with life and death decisions without oversite- correct?

3.)To what extent should blame go to the kidnapper's employers? How far does the Nuremburg defense of "I was just following orders" go to excuse people for what they did?
Only a peaceful and just nation will allow an unbiased and impartial survey into all of these matters.
Of course no nation can disregard the basic human rights, especially not the US, who claims to be the advocate for precisely human rights, freedom of speech etc., no matter what the cause, it would be a hipocracy of unknown dimensions to override these same rights.
Whom are we to trust now?
Just came to think of that America often refer to itself as "God´s country", but as to this day they stand as the most unforgiving and revengeous of all nations, why is that?

Prosecutors/police are prosecuted if they abuse(i.e.-torture) those under questioning and can be forced to face the victim through the legal process. This isn't a matter of simply being detained. Though it should also be pointed out that inmates, detainees, or anyone else inside prison bars has legal redress if they are simply held against their will without being charged.



Perhaps they shouldn't be handed over, perhaps their bosses who ordered them to kidnap people in other nations should be? Ideally, I would imagine that an agency or administration would get their facts straight before deciding to nab someone. In other words, you are darn sure that the person you are going after might truly be guilty of something. The germans looked into the charges, and I would imagine that some of our gumshoes were on the case as well. Not surprising, the number of people released who haven't been charged due to a lack of evidence is hardly rare. Perhaps it's more indicative of how pernicious this problem of detaining without credible evidence has become as of late.



So the Nuremburg defense is a credible one 100%?



So they dropped the case cold on an obviously guilty guy whom the Afghan and subsequent American authorities somehow failed to charge based on credible evidence? If the Afghans and Americans couldn't find anything of substance, what is there to say the Germans would've found anything? On top of that, what suggestion is there that this guy is guilty? And what about the notion of justice? If you were detained and tortured, you are to take money and let it drop while those who did those things to you are to never to be held account for what they did to you? Notions of facing one's own accuser and other basic tenants are only for small and unimportant people?

1) That they are free to act in a way that contravenes the "human rights and freedoms" that the US says it stands for. "Do as I say not as I do" is never a strong card to play in international diplomacy - you will often get laughed out of the room even if you do have the most powerful armed forces in the world.

2) You should have full legal recourse against those governments and/or organisations that were involved or were complicit in the illegal action against you.... and yes it is illegal. If due process was followed in those nations that these individuals were being "renditioned" from then it would not be, but to kidnap a german citizen from a german street and move them cross international borders? So where was the extradition process?

3) Ultimately they are doing their job, but as proved at Nuremburg the defence that "I was following orders" does not stand. Each individual has a moral obligation to point out if they believe the orders they ahve been given are illegal - I certainly would expect soldiers to refuse to shoot what they know are civilians in cold blood for instance. But the blame does lie with those who give the orders in the end - and that does float right to the top it seems.

Can you tell me what you mean by this? Are you saying we should forgive and forget that 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9/11? That the people who did it can reside in places where they cannot be “extradited” and be safe? If you are then I maintain you would not feel this way if 3,000 Danes were butchered by theses monsters.

IMO we have the right to peruse theses killers all over the world. In the 90s we did not do this. Time after time we were hit and we thought of it as a “criminal” matter for the FBI. What we got for that was 9/11 and what really gets me is the fact that you should know that theses monsters kill, mutilate, and behead men women and children without a second thought – but that’s expected right. We mist be perfect and wait for them to get to a place where they can be arrested and “extradited” before we go after them – or we are “revenfgeous”

Ya right. We are – we are going to get them ALL, every one and kill them – count on it sir. When they come and murder your civilians feel free to forgive them.

Our Const protects the rights of US citizens. What happens to citizens of other nations is of no great concern.

Indeed, the reason we enter into treaties like the Geneva Conv is to protect our citizens when they come under the custody of others, quid pro quo. Since we know Muslim extremists could care less about such niceities, whether they are German nationals or otherwise, I say we give them "rights" when it suits us to do so. I would support opting out of many of the treaties we have signed that purport to reduce our sovereignty. As a US president, I would never permit one of our soldiers or officials to be tried by another nation's courts on a matter such as this.

That said, the rights granted to US citizens in the Const and in the law of the US must be followed to the letter if citizenship is to mean anything. I am a very staunch believer in the necessity of this, even if the practice permits some criminals to go free or some criminal acts to occur before they can be stopped--even serious ones.

The constitution and the right of foreigners is not a matter of question here. Extraditions occur all the time, no one seriously argues that they are not legal in any western country.



First, Khalid El-Masri isn't a terrorist. He was found to not be one and was then released. If we do as you suggest, then we cease to be a nation of laws and become a banana republic with a sham of a legal system.




So you believe in the Nuremburg defense entirely? If a person is wrongly tortured, eventhough they are innocent, they are just to deal with it? Is that the moral of the lesson? America is always right, no matter how wrong?



The issue has nothing to do with the constitution.