[74], Khalid El-Masri (also Khaled El-Masri[75] and Khaled Masri,[76] Levantine Arabic pronunciation: [ˈxaːlɪd elˈmɑsˤɾi, -ˈmɑsˤɾe], Arabic: خالد المصري) (born 29 June 1963) is a German citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police, and handed over to the U.S. CIA. On 25 November 2005, the lead investigator for the Council of Europe, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty announced that he had obtained latitude and longitude coordinates for suspected black sites, and he was planning to use satellite imagery over the last several years as part of his investigation. [33], The first well-known American rendition case involved the Achille Lauro hijackers in 1985. Extraordinary rendition or irregular rendition is the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another. The CIA has not commented on the case, while Berlusconi's government has denied any knowledge of a kidnapping plot. [13] In 2009, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that U.S. law did not allow victims of extraordinary rendition to sue U.S. officials for torture suffered overseas.[101]. [148] The US had tried but failed to obstruct the prosecutions by Italy's independent judiciary. He told the BBC that he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months' detention in Syria—often whipped on the palms of his hands with metal cables. The Post's anonymous sources say that the Inspector General is looking into a number of similar cases—possibly as many as thirty innocent men who were captured and transported through what has been called "erroneous renditions". Mr. Masri's ordeal, first reported by The New York Times in January 2005, is one of the best-documented cases of extraordinary rendition. [182] The section of the Executive Order relating to extraordinary rendition provides as follows: On 2 November 2009 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that victims of extraordinary rendition cannot sue Washington for torture suffered overseas, because Congress has not authorized such lawsuits, in ruling on Canadian citizen Maher Arar's case. On 21 February 2008, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted (despite previous government denials) that two U.S. extraordinary rendition flights had stopped on Diego Garcia in 2002, a U.K. The strategy should conform in all its elements with the fundamental principles of our common heritage in terms of democracy, human rights and respect for the rule of law. It’s a major base from which, clearly, operations are launched. Recent renditions have been carried out (for example) by the United States government. Subject: Spain/CIA Flights: Plaintiffs Demand 13 USG Officials be Named as Suspects, "Ghost Pilots: The Times Identifies Three Fliers Facing Kidnapping Charges in Germany Related to a 2003 Counter-terrorism Mission", "WikiLeaks Cables Recount How U.S. A 27 December 2005 story quotes anonymous CIA insiders claiming there have been 10 or fewer such erroneous renditions. This claim cannot be confirmed.[98]. Extraordinary Rendition Under Fire: ... Germany is a bigger center in Europe for the CIA’s planes, and Britain is number two. Britain ran such a camp holding Nazi prisoners at Bad Nenndorf, Germany, after World War II. Victims that were subjected to extraordinary rendition with the support of EU Member states include: Ahmed Agiza who had sought asylum in Sweden had been apprehended by Swedish Security Police to be handed over to CIA agents to be transported to Egypt; and Abu Omar, an Egyptian national, who was captured in Italy, flown to Germany and thereafter to Egypt (Coates, 2006; Singh … Marty qualified the sequestration of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka "Abu Omar") in Milan in February 2003 as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition. The program was designed to place detainee interrogations beyond the reach of law. Overall, the executive order calls for more oversight of interrogation by third parties, but does not end extraordinary rendition. These detention centers violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the UN Convention Against Torture, treaties that all EU member states are bound to follow. 4. The function of the Working Group is to help families of missing persons find out about the fate of victims of disappearance. [179] The term appears to refer to cases in which innocent people were subjected to extraordinary rendition. 2 recalling its previous recommendation on the legality of the detention of persons by the United States in Guantanamo Bay. [52] The CIA reportedly launched an investigation into such incidents of "erroneous rendition". Several months before the publication of the Council of Europe report directed by Dick Marty, Gijs de Vries, the EU's antiterrorism coordinator, asserted in April 2006 that no evidence existed that extraordinary rendition had been taking place in Europe. It’s the first time a court has expressly found that the CIA’s extraordinary programme constituted torture. But the meeting was unproductive, say the officials, and it did not lead to cooperation. He offers a similar argument to dispel the bank account charges: "I am unaware, to this day, that the owner of the account was al-Qaida's head of financial operations.". [21], Such revelations prompted several official investigations into alleged secret detentions and unlawful interstate transfers involving Council of Europe members. Italian prosecutors investigated the abduction, and indicted 26 US citizens including the head of CIA in Italy, Jeffrey W. Castelli. [161], In November 2005, Spanish newspaper El País reported that CIA planes had landed in the Canary Islands and in Palma de Mallorca. In practice, however, the term is widely used to describe such … 1 Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Extraordinary Rendition, Law and the Spatial Architecture of Rights 80 Holiday in Afghanistan On December 31, 2003, a Kuwaiti-born German citizen named Khaled El- Masri stepped on a bus in his hometown of Ülm, Germany on his way to a holiday in Skopje, Macedonia. [146] Among those convicted was Stephen R. Kappes, later the number two man at the CIA,[147] Robert Seldon Lady, formerly CIA station Chief in Milan, Col. Joseph L. Romano, a U S Air Force officer, and asserted CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa, who unsuccessfully sued the US State Department to grant her diplomatic immunity and shield her from arrest. Most cannot be confirmed. Investigators said that the same US agents and planes were involved over and over again. ... a practice also known as extraordinary rendition. In December 2005, an Italian court issued a European arrest warrant against 22 CIA agents suspected of this kidnapping (including Robert Seldon Lady, Eliana Castaldo, Lt. Col. Joseph L. Romano, III, etc.[86]). The sentences ranged from five to eight years for the Americans and three years each for the Italians. He spends much of his time in his apartment in the middle-class Hamburg neighborhood of Uhlenhorst. Although he was involved in the purchase of the ship in question, "I was not aware that the buyer was supposedly the head of al-Qaida." The European Court of Human Rights held the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia responsible for the "extraordinary rendition" of a German citizen, which involved his transfer into the custody of United States authorities, unlawful detention and ill-treatment amounting to torture. [98] Marty's report stated that: The compilation of so-called "black lists" of individuals and companies suspected of maintaining connections with organisations considered terrorist and the application of the associated sanctions clearly breach every principle of the fundamental right to a fair trial: no specific charges, no right to be heard, no right of appeal, no established procedure for removing one's name from the list. However, the lawyer defending the LDH declared that he was surprised that the instruction was only opened on 20 January 2006, and that no verifications had been done before. [154][155] [157], On the other hand, journalist Rui Costa Pinto was heard by the DCIAP, as he had written an article, refused by Visão, about flights passing by Lajes Field, a Portuguese airbase used by the US Air Forces, in the Azores. 31 December 2012 by David Hart QC. "We said no at the time because we believed that we couldn't do this sort of thing in an allied country where many American soldiers are stationed.". A June 2006 report estimated that one hundred people had been kidnapped by the CIA on European Union soil with the cooperation of Council of Europe members and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centers ("black sites"), some located in Europe. Final edition: Extraordinary renditio, "RIGHTS: U.N. Blasts Practice of Outsourcing Torture (See above)", "List of 'Ghost Prisoners' Possibly in CIA Custody", "U.S. Holding at Least Twenty-Six "Ghost Detainees, "The Centenary Report of the Alpha Phi Alpha World Policy Council", "La France enquête sur les avions de la CIA", "CIA Uses German Bases to Transport Terrorists, Paper Says", German Court Challenges C.I.A. "In a resolution passed on 14 February 2007 MEPs approved by a large majority (382 voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining) their committee's final report, which criticized the rendition program and concluded that many European countries tolerated illegal CIA activities including secret flights over their territories. Secret prisons are not a recent invention either. The rendered fighters delivered to Middle Eastern governments are now either dead or in places from which they cannot harm America. [41], The CIA was granted permission to use rendition of indicted terrorists to American soil in a 1995 presidential directive signed by President Bill Clinton, following a procedure[42] established by George H. W. Bush in January 1993. The Macedonian authorities used the US extraordinary rendition program to transfer him to Afghanistan where he was tortured by CIA officials. Scheuer testified in 2007 before Congress that no such assurances were received. [91], Marco Mancini, the SISMI director of anti-terrorism and counterespionage, and Gustavo Pignero, the department's director in 2003, have been arrested on charges of complicity in a kidnapping, with the aggravating circumstances of abuse of power. Laid Saidi, an Algerian detained and tortured along with El-Masri, was apprehended apparently because of a taped telephone conversation in which the word tirat, meaning "tires" in Arabic, was mistaken for the word tairat, meaning "airplanes".[112]. on Foreign Affairs, 110th Cong. [4] President Bill Clinton authorized extraordinary rendition to nations known to practice interrogation, which was called in 2011 by opinion columnist Marc Thiessen "torture by proxy". In April 2006, MEPs leading the investigations expressed concerns that the CIA had conducted more than 1,000 secret flights over European territory since 2001, some to transfer terror suspects to countries that used torture. [48][49], Hundreds of documents retrieved from Libyan foreign ministry offices in Tripoli following the 2011 Libyan civil war show that the CIA and MI6 rendered suspects to Libyan authorities knowing they would be tortured. His case has been characterized by the Swiss senator Dick Marty as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition". On 22 February 2008 a report from Amnesty International stated that there was an "admission by the US and UK governments that two rendition flights had landed in. [169] In 2006 the United Nations found Sweden had violated an international torture ban in its complicity in the CIA's transfer of al-Zari to Egypt. Extraordinary Rendition Scandal Reaches New Heights: Rice on the Offensive in Europe Over Bush Administration’s Use of “Torture Flights” Story December 05, 2005 Watch Full Show Notes that, according to a confidential institutional source, on 26 November 2001 the German Federal Criminal Police Office provided details of Mohammed Zammar's … The parliamentarians and investigators will have to make do with a denial that US diplomats conveyed to German security officials at a December meeting in the US Embassy in Berlin. 1 refers to its Resolution on alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states. "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States", "The war against terrorism, international law and the growth of unchecked executive power in the U.S.", "Torture flights: what No 10 knew and tried to cover up", "We have never been civilized: Torture and the Materiality of World Political Binaries. Mission accomplished, as the saying goes. Extraordinary rendition may be a new term, but it is not a new practice — the English did it in the 17th century, shipping prisoners to Scotland to be tortured. 3) lowers us to the level of all those rogue and evil regimes that we have fought against in the past and against which we claim we are now struggling. on Europe of the H. Comm. "[73], The United States has also been accused of operating "floating prisons" to house and transport those arrested in its War on Terror, according to human rights lawyers. A CIA official who was involved in the case at the time and knows it well told SPIEGEL: "That would have been completely impossible in a country like Germany.". Also, a proposal be considered, in instances where States are unable or unwilling to prosecute persons accused of terrorist acts, to bring these persons within the jurisdiction of an international court that is competent to try them. On 18 October 2007, Maher Arar received a public apology from the U.S. House of Representatives. In a court filing, Falkoff described a classified prisoner transfer memo from Guantanamo as noting that information could not be retrieved, as torture could not be used, and recommending that the prisoner be sent to a nation that practiced torture. As rendition refers to the transfer, the apprehension, detention, interrogation, and any other practices occurring before and after the movement and exchange of extrajudicial prisoners do not fall into the strict definition of extraordinary rendition. The Court further emphasised that this case was of significant importance personally for Mr El-Masri and victims of similar crimes, and for the general public who had the right to know what had happened. Mohamed et al. I’m talking about a now-notorious Bush administration “extraordinary rendition” in Italy, the secret kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan in early 2003, his transport via U.S. airbases in Italy and Germany to Egypt, and there, evidently with the CIA station chief for Italy riding shotgun, directly into the hands of Egyptian torturers. [38] According to the former CIA case officer Bob Baer, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. His statement also laid out the current UK Government view on Extraordinary rendition; Our counter-terrorism relationship with the United States is vital to UK security. [129][130], The World Policy Council, headed by Ambassador Horace Dawson and Senator Edward Brooke, criticized the Bush Administration in the area of civil and human rights for its policy on extraordinary rendition. President Obama also promised to shut down the CIA-run "black sites," and there seems to be anecdotal evidence that extreme renditions are not happening, at least not as much as they did during the Bush administration. ), US and Oceania (USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, etc.) Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was 'not sure' if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed.[38]. On 18 September 2006, a Canadian public enquiry presented its findings, entirely clearing Arar of any terrorist activities. For both German and American investigators, businessman Darkazanli was already seen as the incarnation of evil when few people had even heard of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. CIA officers say the captives were relocated to the North African desert. [185][186][187], China abducts its citizens from e.g. The importance of European court’s ruling against extraordinary rendition. But the agents stationed in Germany were skeptical, arguing that the methods the agency envisioned would be more suitable in a place like South America. The article went on to suggest that this may make Jeppesen a potential defendant in a lawsuit by Khaled El-Masri. Peter Wilkitzki * * Honorary Professor, University of Cologne and former General Director Criminal Law, German Federal Ministry of Justice. The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture". [29], In June 2005, the Italian judge Guido Salvini issued a warrant for the arrest of 13 persons said to be agents or operatives of the CIA in association with Nasr's kidnapping. Thursday, 6 July 2006 – Strasbourg. I am absolutely clear that there must and will continue to be the strongest possible intelligence and counter-terrorism relationship with the US, consistent with UK law and our international obligations. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan national and top al Qaeda operative who was detained in Pakistan in late 2001, was later sent by the U.S. to Egypt.There, under the threat of torture, he alleged that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda in biological and chemical warfare. Flew 1,000 Flights in Secret, Texts adopted by Parliament. The AP story quotes Tom Malinowski, Washington office director of Human Rights Watch who said: I am glad the CIA is investigating the cases that they are aware of, but by definition you are not going to be aware of all such cases, when you have a process designed to avoid judicial safeguards. But its charges did not stick, and in 2006 the Federal Prosecutor's Office shut down its investigations due to a lack of evidence. Renditions", US Pressured Italy to Influence Judiciary, "US 'torture flights' stopped at Shannon", "Investigations into CIA 'torture flights, WikiLeaks reveals Justice Minister's Dermot Ahern's rendition fears, "Une "prison secrète" américaine a existé dans un camp de l'OTAN au Kosovo", "US ran Guantanamo-style prison in Kosovo – Council of Europe envoy", Portugal: Renditions: Judicial investigation into CIA flights begins, "Portugal: Over 700 prisoners flown to Guantánamo through Portuguese airspace", Portugal/CIA – La Fiscalía General abre una investigación sobre los supuestos vuelos ilegales de la CIA en Portugal, Portugal: Evidence of illegal CIA rendition flights surfacing, "El Gobierno canario pide explicaciones sobre vuelos de la CIA en Tenerife", "La Fiscalía de Canarias investigará las escalas de vuelos de la CIA en Tenerife y Gran Canaria", "Un supuesto avión de la CIA aterriza en la base portuguesa de Azores", Wikileaks: US pressured Spain over CIA rendition and Guantánamo torture rendition, WikiLeaks Cables Reveal U.S. To support the claim because `` going forward would reveal State secrets '' findings and has denied any knowledge a. 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