Speaking upon the rack
Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen of middle-eastern descent, was detained in 2003 by Macedonian authorities when he was mistaken for an al-Qaida terrorist. El-Masri was secretly held by authorities for 23 days, before being handed over to the American CIA. Under the CIA’s “rendition program”, el-Masri was flown to an Afghanistan prison. While being interrogated by the CIA, it was reported that el-Masri was stripped, hooded, sodomized, and subjected to a variety of enhanced interrogation techniques. Although held for months, el-Masri was never changed, brought before a judge, or allowed access to family or legal council. When the CIA ultimately realized they had the wrong man, el-Masri was blindfolded, chained, and flown to Albania where he was dumped on the side of the road. A lawsuit filed by el-Masri was later dismissed by a U.S. District court on the grounds of “state secrets” and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. The European court of human rights, however, did hear the case and, in 2012, unanimously found that both the U.S. and Macedonian government’s had acted inappropriately and specifically proclaimed that the CIA’s rendition techniques amounted to torture, prohibited by a international law. Formal apologies and compensation were demanded. The el-Masri case and the European court’s decision highlighted several controversies, which will likely continue to influence future U.S. homeland security policy. The first deals with the arrest, transporting, and holding of suspected terrorist without appropriate due process, review, and legal safeguards provided by the traditional American justice system. Instead, suspected terrorists are generally thought of as enemy combatants, which have few due process rights under U.S. Law or the Constitution. The second controversy deals with the use of enhanced interrogation techniques relating to suspected terrorists. With the legality and appropriateness of such techniques now being seriously called into question, their use has since been banned by Presidential Obama. The el-Masri incident later inspired the Hollywood film, “Rendition” which also questioned the effectiveness of such techniques. Towards the end of the film, the main character, quotes Shakespeare to explain the fictionalized victim’s apparent false confession, proclaiming: “I fear you speak upon the rack, where men enforced do speak anything.” Wise words- worth remembering.
