Justices Reject Suit Alleging CIA Abduction, Torture
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today terminated a lawsuit from a man who claims he was abducted and tortured by the CIA, effectively endorsing Bush administration arguments that state secrets would be revealed if the case were allowed to proceed.
Khaled el-Masri, 44, alleged that he was kidnapped by CIA agents in Europe and held in an Afghan prison for four months in a case of mistaken identity.
The administration has not publicly acknowledged that Mr. el-Masri was detained, and lower courts dismissed his suit after the administration asserted that state secrets would be revealed if the lawsuit was not blocked. The justices rejected his appeal without comment.
The case had been seen as a test of the administration’s legal strategy to stop it and several other national security lawsuits by invoking the doctrine of state secrets. Another lawsuit over the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, also dismissed on state secrets grounds, still is pending before the justices.
“We are very disappointed,” Mr. el Masri’s attorney in Germany, Manfred Gnijdic, said..
“It will shatter all trust in the American justice system,” Mr. Gnijdic said, charging that America expects every other nation to act responsibly, but refuses to take responsibility for its own actions.
“That is a disaster,” Mr. Gnijdic said.
A coalition of groups favoring greater openness in government says the Bush administration has used the state secrets privilege much more often than its predecessors.
Mr. el-Masri’s case centers on the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terrorism suspects are captured and taken to foreign countries for interrogation. Human rights groups have heavily criticized the program.
President Bush has repeatedly defended the policies in the war on terror, saying as recently as last week that America does not engage in torture.
Mr. el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was mistakenly identified as an associate of the September 11, 2001 hijackers and was detained while attempting to enter Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003.
He claims that CIA agents stripped, beat, shackled, diapered, drugged, and chained him to the floor of a plane for a flight to Afghanistan. He says he was held for four months in a CIA-run prison known as the “salt pit” in the Afghan capital of Kabul. The lawsuit sought damages of at least $75,000.
The American government has neither confirmed nor denied Mr. el-Masri’s account. But Chancellor Merkel of Germany has said that American officials acknowledged that Mr. el-Masri’s detention was a mistake.
Mr. el-Masri’s account also has been bolstered by European investigations and American news reports. In January, German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA agents who allegedly took part in the operation against him.