Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Come gli USA  sequestrano e torturano un ordinario venditore di macchine tedesco

Non e' in questo NG che vi e' stato di recente un bel dibattito sulla 
tortura secondo le leggi vigenti americane?
Dopo questo articolo vi apparira' piu' teorico che mai...
Am.
'They beat me from all sides' 
A German car salesman says that a year ago he was kidnapped in Europe, 
beaten and flown to a US-controlled jail in Afghanistan. Now the German 
government is collecting evidence to back up his story. James Meek hears 
Khaled el-Masri's account of life in America's secret offshore prison 
network 
  Friday January 14, 2005
The Guardian 
  A man is walking alone along a mountain path in the darkness. He is 
carrying a suitcase. He seems frightened, tired and confused. He has 
long hair and a long beard, but they are untidy, as if he did not grow 
them voluntarily. He turns a bend and meets three men carrying 
Kalashnikovs.
 The man shows them his passport. It indicates that he is a German 
citizen, born in Lebanon, called Khaled el-Masri. Using poor English, he 
tells them that he does not know where he is. They tell him that he is 
on the Albanian border, close to Serbia and Macedonia, and that he is 
there illegally since he doesn't have an Albanian stamp in his passport.
 The story that el-Masri tells them by way of explanation, on this 
evening in late May 2004, is extraordinary: a story of how an unemployed 
German car salesman from the town of Ulm went on a New Year's holiday to 
Macedonia, was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held 
incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled 
and blindfolded and flown to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but 
controlled by Americans. Five months after first being seized, he says, 
still with no explanation or charge, he was flown back to Europe and 
dumped in an unknown country which turned out to be Albania.
 What really happened? With no way to prove his story, el-Masri's 
account remains in the balance, a terrifying snapshot of America's "war 
on terror". It is certain that he returned home to Ulm from Albania in 
May 2004, and that he was taken off a bus from Germany at the Macedonian 
border on New Year's Eve 2003. The only person who has offered a clear 
explanation for what happened in the five months in between is el-Masri 
himself. Yet that may change.
 Advertiser links
 Cheap Flights - You Need to Get Away
Last minute airfare deals. Hotels, cottages, weekends away...
shopcityuk.com
Buyaflight - a Cheap Flight
If you are looking to buy a cheap flight then browse through...
buyaflight.co.uk
Book Cheap Flights Online at ebookers
Book cheap flights online at ebookers and benefit from...
ebookers.com
The German authorities are now taking his allegations very seriously. 
They are subjecting a sample from el-Masri's hair to radioisotope 
analysis, which can reveal, down to a particular country, the source of 
a person's food and drink over a period of time. Discussions are also 
under way about bringing to Germany two men whom el-Masri has identified 
as being with him in the Afghan prison, and who were also subsequently 
released. The fact that the German authorities do regard Ulm as an area 
of potentially dangerous radical Islamic activity - a number of premises 
were raided and alleged Islamic activists were arrested on Wednesday - 
only emphasises the concern that Germany has over the el-Masri case.
 So far the US authorities have neither confirmed nor denied el-Masri's 
story, although German investigators first requested information about 
the case in autumn. The FBI office in the US embassy in Berlin did not 
return calls yesterday.
 On Tuesday the Guardian was the first European news organisation to 
interview el-Masri, at the Ulm offices of his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. 
In a conversation lasting more than four hours, el-Masri conveyed a 
powerful impression of sincerity: if his story is not true, he must be 
an actor of genius. He broke down in sobs as he described the moment he 
was abducted by masked men and put on a plane, excused himself to vomit 
as he recalled the filthy water he was given to drink in jail, and 
brightened as he described the hours before his return to Germany. Often 
he would pick up a pen and sketch the layout of a room or building.
 If true, the abduction would add to our understanding of a pattern of 
US behaviour frightening in its implications both for America and for 
the rest of the world. The former director of the CIA, George Tenet, 
told the US 9/11 Commission last year that even before September 11 the 
US had abducted more than 70 foreigners it considered terrorists - a 
process Washington has declared legal under the label "extraordinary 
rendition".
 An investigation by the Washington Post last year suggested that the US 
held 9,000 people overseas in an archipelago of known prisons (such as 
Abu Ghraib in Iraq) and unknown ones run by the Pentagon, the CIA or 
other organisations. But this figure does not include others "rendered" 
to third-party governments who then act as subcontractors for 
Washington, enabling the US to effectively torture detainees while 
technically denying that it carries out torture.
 El-Masri's ordeal began, he says, when he decided to escape, for one 
week over New Year, the stress of living in a single room in Ulm as the 
unemployed father of a family of six. On a friend's recommendation he 
bought a cheap bus ticket to Skopje, capital of Macedonia, intending to 
find a hotel when he got there.
 The bus left the borders of the EU and crossed Serbia without incident. 
Then, at the Macedonian border, at 3pm, el-Masri was called off the bus. 
Now 41, he has lived in Germany for 20 years, the last 10 as a citizen. 
"I didn't feel bad," he says. "I just thought it was a mistake."
 He was taken to a room with a table and chairs where four men whom he 
took to be Slavic searched his luggage and questioned him in poor 
English, asking him about links to Islamic organisations. Several hours 
later, flanked by armed police, he was driven to a city he assumes was 
Skopje and escorted to the hotel room where he was to spend the next few 
weeks. "I asked if I was arrested," says el-Masri. "They said: 'Can you 
see handcuffs?'"
 El-Masri was kept prisoner in the room for 23 days; Macedonian civilian 
police were constantly present, and he was subject to repeated 
interrogations about his links to Islamic organisations - he says he has 
none - and about the mosque in Ulm where he worships.
 After about 10 days, a Macedonian Mr Nice appeared. "He said it was 
taking a long time, too much time - let's make an end to it, and let's 
make a deal. 'We have to say you are a member of al-Qaida ... then we'll 
put you on a plane and take you back to Germany.' I refused, naturally. 
It would have been suicide to sign."
 But el-Masri was accused of having been to a terror training camp in 
Jalalabad, of having a fake passport, and being in reality a citizen of 
Egypt. On the evening of January 23, he was handcuffed, blindfolded, put 
in a car and told he was going to Germany. He was driven to a place 
where he heard the sound of a plane, then heard the voice of one of the 
Macedonians saying he would have a medical examination.
 "I heard the door being closed," says el-Masri. "And then they beat me 
from all sides, from everywhere, with hands and feet. With knives or 
scissors they took away my clothes. In silence. The beating, I think, 
was just to humiliate me, to hurt me, to make me afraid, to make me 
silent. They stripped me naked. I was terrified. They tried to take off 
my pants. I tried to stop them so they beat me again. And when I was 
naked I heard a camera." El-Masri breaks down as he recalls the moment 
when the men carried out an intrusive anal search.
 He was dressed in a nappy, a short-sleeved, short-legged suit and a 
belt. His feet were shackled and his hands were chained to the belt. His 
ears were plugged and ear defenders placed over them and a clip put on 
his nose. A hood was put over his blindfold. With his arms raised 
painfully high behind his back, he was driven to an aircraft where he 
was thrown down on to a bare metal floor, chained and bound, and given 
an injection. He was dimly aware of a landing and takeoff and a second 
injection before the plane landed again and he was put into the boot of 
a car.
 El-Masri arrived in what he later found to be his cell by being pushed 
violently against the wall, thrown to the floor, having feet placed on 
his head and his back and having his chains removed. The cell was to be 
his home for the next four months. From the graffiti on the wall - in 
Arabic script, but not Arabic - and the Afghan dress of the guards, he 
deduced that he was in Afghanistan. There was nothing in the cell except 
a blanket, a filthy plastic mat and a bottle of tainted water so vile 
that the memory of it makes him literally gag.
 El-Masri soon discovered that the prison, though technically Afghan, 
was run from behind the scenes by the US. His first encounter with an 
American was with a masked individual who spoke English with what 
el-Masri believes was an American accent. He had a Palestinian 
translator. The American took a blood sample and photographed el-Masri 
naked again.
 "I asked him if I could have fresh water," said el-Masri. "And he said: 
'It's not our problem, it's a problem of the Afghan people.' I said: 
'Afghanistan doesn't have planes to kidnap people in Europe and bring 
them here, so it's not the problem of the Afghan people.'"
 By whispering through the door, and exchanging messages on pieces of 
toilet paper, el-Masri found out a few details about his fellow 
prisoners: two Saudi brothers of Pakistani origin who had been 
imprisoned for two years, two Tanzanians, a Pakistani, a Yemeni, and 
several Afghans. (Mr Gnjidic says two of the prisoners have been traced 
but he didn't want to identify them for fear of putting their lives at 
risk.)
 El-Masri says the first of many interrogations was carried out by a 
masked man with a south Lebanese accent, with seven or eight silent 
observers in black masks listening in. "He said: 'Do you know where you 
are?' And I answered: 'Yes, I know, I'm in Kabul.' So he said: 'It's a 
country without laws. And nobody knows that you are here. Do you know 
what this means?'"
 Repeatedly, he would be asked the same questions, challenging his 
identity, accusing him of attending terrorist training camps. Some of 
the interrogators, el-Masri believes, were American.
 After about a month, el-Masri met two unmasked Americans who other 
prisoners referred to as "the Doctor" and "the Boss". The Doctor was a 
tall, pale man in his 60s with grey collar-length hair. The Boss was 
younger, with red hair and blue eyes, about 5ft 10in, and wore glasses. 
Then, in March, el-Masri and the other prisoners began a hunger strike. 
After 27 days of starvation, he was taken in chains one night to meet 
the Americans and a senior Afghan. Near to hysteria, el-Masri said they 
had to let him go, put him before a US court, let him speak to somebody 
from the German government, or watch him starve to death.
 The Boss told him he had to get Washington's permission to help him, 
but was clearly angry, saying: "He shouldn't be here. He's in the wrong 
place." "I had the impression that the Doctor thought I wasn't guilty, 
and had sent a report saying so even after the second interrogation," 
says el-Masri. Yet he was taken back to his cell, where he continued his 
hunger strike. Conditions in the cell improved, with a bed and a new 
carpet, but he was barely able to move. On the 37th day he was force fed 
chocolate-flavoured nutrients through a tube stuffed up his nose. 
El-Masri began to eat again and the Americans brought him fresh water 
and promised that he would be released within three weeks.
 They brought a native German speaker to the prison. "I asked him: 'Are 
you from the German authorities?' He said: 'I do not want to answer that 
question.' When I asked him if the German authorities knew that I was 
there, he answered: 'I can't answer this question.'" (Hofmann, the 
prosecutor, says the German security services do not admit to any 
knowledge of an agent visiting el-Masri in prison.)
 It was to be more than a week before el-Masri finally got out of the 
prison; the German told him one of the obstacles to his speedy release 
was the Americans' determination not to leave any evidence that he had 
ever been there. He was flown to Albania in what he thinks was a small 
passenger jet, blindfolded and in plastic handcuffs.
 When el-Masri got back to Ulm, he found his wife and four children had 
disappeared. They had returned to Lebanon. He traced them, brought them 
back, and told his wife his story.
 "It was a crime, it was humiliating, and it was inhuman, although I 
think that in Afghanistan I was treated better than the other prisoners. 
Somebody in the prison told me that before I came somebody died under 
torture. Those responsible have to take responsibility, and should be 
held to account."
 Hofmann and his investigative team now have two tasks: to find evidence 
supporting or disproving el-Masri's story and, if they can show it is 
true, to work out who to charge with kidnapping. But how do you charge a 
government? "For the moment," says Hofmann, "I have to believe the 
story, because there is no evidence that it is not true."

What really happened? With no way to prove his story,
Opss...
-Stefano