The US Stands Accused of Kidnapping

[plasticsundance]

The following article is from Der Spiegel about a violation of international law on the part of the US. Sadly, this is not a one time incident, as those familiar with US actions upon Arabs/Muslims living in the US after the event of 911.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,341636,00.html

The case is extremely sensitive. A German citizen may have been kidnapped by American agents and illegally taken to Afghanistan. Now, German authorities are quietly investigating the case. But no one here wants it to interfere with US-German rapprochement.

That all-important piece of evidence is pitch black and about 20 centimeters long. It's a single strand of hair from the head of Khaled el-Masri, 41, and spent most of its life heavily oiled and slicked back. Now, the hair has become a global player; current German-American relations largely hinge on it.

... Thus, the first opportunity was to be used to ferret the suspect from Neu-Ulm off to be interrogated in the secret prisons in Afghanistan. On Dec. 31, 2003, el-Masri boarded a bus in Munich bound for Macedonia. He was looking, he said later, to get some time away. A week of vacation in Skopje seemed just the thing. He and his wife had fought heavily, el-Masri claimed. When he crossed the Serbian-Macedonian border, patrols pulled him off the bus.

All explanations were in vain as three armed Macedonian men in street clothes took him to a hotel. After three weeks of interrogations, one of the Macedonians told el-Masri that "the matter is now no longer in our hands." El-Masri recalls that seven or eight masked men put some diapers and a dark-blue training suit on him, before bringing him to an airplane, fastening him up tight with a seatbelt and then sedating him with an injection.

[Oreo]

1. Maybe that explains why there locking down Germany for Bush's trip

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3115995

War criminal Bush is on his way to Germany and might want to make sure the locals don't get restless and do something rash like arresting him

[Patiod]

2. Article about "outsourcing" torture in this week's New Yorker

Unfortunately, it's not online.

Basically says that we're nabbing bad guys, and then bringing them to other countries, where people with less stringent laws than we have do our dirty work. I think they discuss the case you quoted as well.

There's not even a consensus that torture elicits good information, or better information than "negotiating" with the subject (such as negotiating for a reduced sentence, etc)

Jane Mayer Outsourcing torture - The battle over “extraordinary rendition.”