Too Incredible To Be True: The Khaled El-Masri Story

Dana Priest at WaPo has finally picked up the thread in the woefully over-looked case of Khaled El-Masri. Regular readers might remember that it was not so long ago that this humble blog was - quite incredibly - rated the #2 resource on the Web for a Google search on his name (Priest's article refers to him as Khaled Masri).

This is one of those stories that governments immediately brush off as too ridiculous to even discuss, and the press groupthink quickly decides is just too incredible to be true. So, to their eternal shame, they ignore it. Even though there was an emerging pattern of such stories, and even though Condi Rice's department had already admitted the error back in April this year!

A German citizen detained for five months in an Afghan prison was released in May 2004 on direct orders from Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned the man had been mistakenly identified as a terror suspect, government officials said.

I wonder if the German government has finished analyzing that DNA of a single strand of el-Masri's hair yet?

Scientists at the Bavarian archive for geology in Munich are currently using a method called isotope analysis, which can search for trace elements such as sulphur, to roughly determine where in the world el-Masri has been in recent months.

I wonder if they are ever going to tell the public what they found? It looks like the USA is blackmailing European governments here - spill the beans on us and we will spill plenty of beans on you.

It's the sort of scandal that could topple governments around the world, and rightly so. We, the people, do not want our governments involved in such routine torture and lies. Our politicians might now be fearing the truth coming out, but what do we, the people, have to fear? Nothing but fear itself.

The press has dropped the ball on this story, big time. Questions should be asked of the media as well as the governments involved. If the big picture in BushWorld is just too shocking to believe, that's no reason not to report it.

Update: With the help of the ACLU, el-Masri is now suing the CIA (this link includes a visual record of the flights involved).