[geocentrism] Re: Privilege invoked 39 times since 2001
- From: j a <ja_777_aj@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 12:14:41 -0700 (PDT)
I find it interesting that the article does not mention the number of times it
was invoked between 1976 and 2001.
Neville Jones <njones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: I don't know whether this man had a
case or not, but the interesting thing about it is how so-called democratic
governments are rapidly (rabidly?) becoming unaccountable.
They remain fully accountable to God, though.
High court rejects alleged CIA kidnap victim Updated
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Enlarge By Chip Somodevilla, AFP/Getty Images Khaled El-Masri is
seen at the National Press Club in Washington in this Nov. 2006, file photo.
The U.S. Supreme Court today threw out a lawsuit from the Lebanese-born German
who claimed he was tortured after being kidnapped and detained for several
months by the CIA.
swapContent('firstHeader','applyHeader'); By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON â?? The Supreme Court on Tuesday spurned an appeal from a German
man of Lebanese descent who says he was abducted by CIA agents and flown to
Afghanistan to be tortured.
The highly publicized case of Khaled el-Masri against the U.S. government had
been dismissed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based on the
Bush administration's claim that airing it would reveal state secrets.
If the justices had taken up el-Masri's petition, it could have clarified the
breadth of the government's privilege to withhold information about its tactics
in a post-Sept. 11 era. The privilege, as the high court explained in a major
1953 case, allows the government to withhold information if "there is a
reasonable danger" that disclosure would threaten national security.
El-Masri said he was kidnapped in December 2003 as he boarded a bus in
Germany for a vacation in Macedonia. He said he was beaten, drugged, bound and
blindfolded as he was transferred to a prison in Afghanistan. There, he said,
he was tortured and interrogated. He was released after five months, apparently
the victim of mistaken identity. (German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in 2005
he had been "erroneously taken.")
In suing for U.S. constitutional and international law violations, el-Masri
insisted that the numerous news reports about his situation should have
exempted it from the "state secrets" privilege. But the 4th Circuit said the
information already in the public record "does not include the facts that are
central to litigating his action. Rather, those central facts â?? the CIA means
and methods that form the subject matter of el-Masri's claim â?? remain state
secrets."
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Afghanistan | Supreme Court | Lebanese | Central
Intelligence Agency | High court | Masri | CIA agents | Khaled
El-Masri's ACLU lawyers urged the court to hear the appeal, saying the
government should not be able to avoid judicial accountability by declaring its
methods a state secret.
At the height of Cold War tensions between the United States and the former
Soviet Union, U.S. presidents used the state secrets privilege six times from
1953 to 1976, according to OpenTheGovernment.org. Since 2001, it has been used
39 times, enabling the government to unilaterally withhold documents from the
court system, the group said.
Contributing: Associated Press
Neville
www.GeocentricUniverse.com
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