Khalid El-Masri

Who is Khalid El-Masri?

Khalid El-Masri is a German citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police, and handed over to the U.S. CIA. While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held in a black site, interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other inhuman and degrading treatment, which at times escalated to torture. After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest and torture were a mistake and released him. He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees whom the CIA has abducted from 2001-2005.

In May 2004 the US Ambassador to Germany, Daniel R. Coats, convinced the German interior minister not to press charges or to reveal the program. El-Masri filed suit against the CIA for his arrest, extraordinary rendition and torture. In 2006, his suit El Masri v. Tenet, in which he was represented by the ACLU, was dismissed by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, based on the US government's claiming the privilege of state secrets. The ACLU said the Bush administration attempted to shield its abuses by invoking this privilege. The case was also dismissed by the Appeals Court for the Fourth Circuit, and in December 2007, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.