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 CIA. Under the CIA’s “rendition program”, el-Masri was flown to an Afghanistan prison. While being interrogated, 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 program and enhanced interrogation 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 hopefully influence future U.S. homeland security policy. The first deals with the strategy of arresting, transporting, and holding suspected terrorist without appropriate due process, review, and legal safeguards provided by the traditional American justice system. Instead, suspected terrorists, like el-Masri, are often treated as enemy combatants, which have few due process rights under current 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 suspended.
The el-Masri incident also inspired the Hollywood film, “Rendition” and further highlighted the important problems associated with the use of such CIA techniques. In the film, the fictionalized victim is forced to undergo weeks of enhanced interrogation and finally admits, likely without merit, that he is involved in terrorism. The moral of the story is summed at the end of the film when the main character, a CIA operative, quotes Shakespeare, proclaiming “I fear you speak upon the rack, where men enforced do speak anything.” These are wise words- worth remembering as the homeland security policies of the future are constructed.
