How the US Does an Injustice Then Covers Its Tracks

Here's an interesting article in the Washington Post about the Khalid al-Masri case:

A top American diplomat warned Germany against issuing arrest warrants for U.S. commandos involved in the 2003 abduction of a German citizen wrongly suspected of terrorist ties, a classified State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks reveals.

Khalid al-Masri, a Lebanese who had lived in Germany since 1994, was abducted while on holiday in Macedonia and flown to Afghanistan, where he says he was beaten and sodomized during repeated interrogations before being transferred to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In April 2004 CIA Director George Tenet decided Masri had been mistakenly detained, according to news reports, and the following month he was released.

A prosecutor in Munich subsequently investigated the Masri affair, and on Jan. 31, 2007 issued arrest warrants for 13 of the suspected kidnappers, all thought to be CIA personnel.

Washington was very upset by the action, according to a cable from the No. 2 official at the American embassy in Berlin, deputy chief of mission John M. Koenig. The cable was marked “Secret//Noforn,” meaning no foreign dissemination.

On Feb. 6, 2007, Koenig met with German Deputy National Security Adviser Rolf Nikel to express U.S. unhappiness with the arrest warrants, and cautioned German federal officials against trying to enforce them.

Koenig “reiterated our strong concerns about the possible issuance of international arrest warrants in the al-Masri case,” according to the cable, sent in the name of the U.S. ambassador to Germany, William R. Timken.

The “issuance of
 international arrest warrants would have a negative impact on our bilateral relationship,” Koenig said, “remind(ing) Nikel of the repercussions to U.S.-Italian bilateral relations in the wake of a similar move by Italian authorities last year.”

The reference to “repercussions” in Italy was not immediately clear. At the time, a prosecutor in Milan was seeking the arrest of nearly two dozen CIA operatives and a U.S. military officer in connection with the abduction of another al-Qaeda suspect, known as Abu Omar, but the Italian government had refused his request that they be extradited to stand trial. All but a few were convicted of kidnapping in absentia.

There's more. Go read the whole article with its links.

I love the way the US doesn't bother with the truth. The article quotes US authorities saying that after they discovered their mistake "the following month he was released". Funny. He was flown from Afghanistan where he was being tortured to Albania and then dumped on a back road without so much as an apology. Wow. That is "being released". That's like the mob slipping a guy off the side of a boat with concrete shoes claiming that they were now "done and were releasing the guy they grabbed". Yeah... releasing him to let the fishes nibble on him.

Most Americans have no clue about the many, many people who were "snatched" by the US, tortured, and then the US discovered its "mistake" and they dumped the poor victim. No justice here. Nothing. But I guess that is the way Americans want other countries to start treating American citizens. You know, a murder happens, you have an American tourist somewhere in the country, you pick them up, torture them for "their murder", then decide that "it was a mistake" so you drive them to the border and push them into another country. That's how the US wants its citizens handled because that is what it is doing with other countries citizens!