Friday, December 14, 2012

Euro Court accepts dismissed ACLU suit originally rejected in US court

In a Dec. 13, 2012 post from Martha Neil on the ABA Journal, the Euro Court ruled, in a lawsuit originally filed in the U.S. but dismissed, that the man mistaken for a Terrorist was brutalized by the CIA.  "When a German car salesman filed suit in the U.S. claiming that he had been mistaken for an al-Qaida terrorist with a similar name and held for months and interrogated and brutalized in Macedonia and Afghanistan as part of a clandestine rendition program operated by the CIA, the case was dismissed because allowing the American Civil Liberties Union to pursue it would have violated a state secrets privilege.

But the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday found that Khaled el-Masri had been shackled, hooded, severely beaten and sodomized "at the hands of the CIA rendition team," the Associated Press reports.
The Guardian, the New York Times and the New Yorker's Close Read page also have stories and a post on NPR's blog, The Two-Way, provides additional background about the case.
Macedonia said it accepted the ruling of the court, which is based in Strasbourg, France, and would pay the judgment of approximately $78,000 awarded. The CIA declined comment.
In a press release last year, the ACLU discusses a petition it filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking redress against the U.S. There has reportedly been no response, so far, from the U.S."

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