EUROPE’S HUMAN rights court began hearing the first case arising from the US’s post-9/11 rendition programme yesterday when the government of Macedonia went on trial, accused of multiple human rights abuses of a German citizen.
Khaled el-Masri (48), a car salesman of Lebanese descent, was detained in Macedonia in December 2003 and held for more than three weeks in Skopje, before being handed to CIA officers who flew him to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly tortured for the next five months.
The CIA appears to have realised it had made a mistake: it had been looking for another man of the same name. Mr el-Masri was then flown from Afghanistan to Albania and abandoned by the side of a road in a mountainous area, with no means of returning home.
The grand chamber of the European court of human rights in Strasbourg began hearing a case brought by Mr el-Masri’s lawyers which alleges a breach of his European Convention rights to liberty and freedom from torture.
Several other European states are expected to face proceedings before the European court as more details emerge of complicity in acts committed during the US’s post-9/11 counter-terrorism operations.
The Macedonian government has insisted that while its police did detain Mr el-Masri, he was later permitted to leave for Kosovo. That claim is expected to be contradicted at court by a statement from a former Macedonian government minister. Moreover, the allegations Mr el-Masri makes have largely been confirmed by both the German government and, privately, the US government.
In December 2005, while standing alongside then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, German chancellor Angela Merkel told a press conference “the American administration is not denying” it was responsible for Mr el-Masri’s abduction, and accepted it had detained the wrong man.
“I’m happy to say we have discussed the one case, which the government of the United States has of course accepted as a mistake,” Dr Merkel said. “I’m very happy that the foreign minister has repeated here that when such mistakes happen, they must be corrected immediately.”
Inquiries by the Council of Europe and the German Bundestag have also largely corroborated Mr el-Masri’s account. – (Guardian service)