Germany has dropped a request to the US to extradite 13 suspected CIA agents accused of abducting a German citizen, officials and media reports say.
A justice ministry official reportedly confirmed an article in the German weekly Der Spiegel that said the US had refused the extradition request.
[. . .]
A spokeswoman for the justice ministry in Berlin told the Associated Press news agency Germany had decided against passing on to US authorities the extradition demand of the prosecutors in Munich.
[. . .]
"Mr Masri has pursued litigation for civil damages here in the US and this litigation is ongoing," he said.
"To date, US courts have barred his suit based on the US government's assertion of state secrecy concerns."
[. . .]
Mr Masri says he was kidnapped in Macedonia in 2003, flown to a secret jail in Afghanistan and tortured there.
He says he was detained for five months before being released in Albania after the Americans realised they had got the wrong man.
Okay, where to begin? The US sends CIA agents to kidnap a foreign national, take him to another country, and torture him. I have a problem with that right off.
Next, the man doesn't seem to have any legal recourse in his own country or in ours. This too seems wrong. The German are apparently afraid of pissing off the US, which seems a little odd at this point, but that's how they are telling it. And the US seems to have very little sense of justice anymore because everything has become a matter of national security. Where (or when) will it all end?
2 comments:
I must say that I was not at all surprised by this. It is the general policy of the U.S. Government to deny such requests, especially when the people in question are U.S. citizens and were acting in the "interest" of their government.
It's not that I find it surprising, it's just that I think it is wrong. The only thing I find remotely surprising is the fact that Germany is so concerned about pissing us off.
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