El Masri vs. CIA: Action repulsed

[Adler17]

The German Khaled El Masri, who was kidnapped by the CIA and only after month, when they recognized he was the wrong person, released, sued the CIA for damages. Yesterday the judge ruled to reject the action as national secrets might be unvailed. He added however if all happened what El Masri told he would have a pretension on damages.
I think the US are on the best way to loose their status as law state! I mean how can this argumentation be successful at a trial? So the CIA could do everything it wants and nobody can sue it when it is wrong! In Germany publicity can be excluded from a trial and other things like this. Isn´t that possible in the US?

Adler

 

[Xenocrates]

Yes this is a poor show. We debated it a bit before on

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171484

but no one was minded to try the defend the judge.

 

[aussieboy]

The German Khaled El Masri, who was kidnapped by the CIA and only after month, when they recognized he was the wrong person, released, sued the CIA for damages. Yesterday the judge ruled to reject the action as national secrets might be unvailed. He added however if all happened what El Masri told he would have a pretension on damages.
I think the US are on the best way to loose their status as law state! I mean how can this argumentation be successful at a trial? So the CIA could do everything it wants and nobody can sue it when it is wrong! In Germany publicity can be excluded from a trial and other things like this. Isn´t that possible in the US?

Adler

Judges can try and exclude media from proceedings, but it often makes journalists complain about the First amendement.

Besides, people are released on wrongful convictions all the time, and their suits against the DA's office are often rejected unless the DA or other authority commited grave misconduct.

 

[Brian_B]

See my comments on the linked thread. It's common judicial practice to avoid using the U.S. court system as a floor to debate foreign policy. Oh, by the way, he can appeal his case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals which I'm sure he is doing.

 

[7ronin]

What happened to Mr. El Masri is very sad, both his abduction and his shabby treatment by the United States government subsequent to his release.

Generally speaking, though, ALL countries/governments reserve to themselves the decisions on when, where, how, and if they will allow themselves to be sued in a court of law. Mr. El Masri lost, but at least he got his foot in the courthouse door which is more than would have happened in most of the countries in the world.

 

[jameson]

@Brian B: abduction of individuals isn't foreign policy, unless the foreign policy of the US is to ignore niceties such as charging individuals with something and demanding extradition (I'm sure the US and Germany have a treaty in place).
See my comments in the previous thread.

 

[Kozmos]

I can already see how the knowledge of evolution is going to become a national secret. Land of the Free and Home of the Brave indeed.

 

[Brian_B]

@Brian B: abduction of individuals isn't foreign policy, unless the foreign policy of the US is to ignore niceties such as charging individuals with something and demanding extradition (I'm sure the US and Germany have a treaty in place).
See my comments in the previous thread.

Abduction and detention of suspected terrorists is indeed foreign policy whether you want to call it that or simple prosecution of war or the military assets of a country. In the United States, the Executive branch and not the judicial branch oversees the operation of the armed forces. You might as well have someone in Iraq file a lawsuit in the U.S. Courts arguing damages from the invasion.

The U.S. and Germany may indeed have treaties in place and I am not familiar with the facts of this situation. Did Germany try to contact the U.S. in regards to his detention? In the other thread when I said there are other channels aside from the U.S. courts, that is precisely what I meant: the German government steps in and says: "Hey, release our citizen." Not everything should be decided/debated in the U.S. court system. If there lacks another effective venue to handle things, that is unfortunate; however, it is NOT the fault of the U.S. court system. I don't know the first thing about the multitude of international courts that exist out there, there seems to be an alphabet soup full of European, International, and UN backed courts that adjudicate things from criminal to human rights issues. As you pointed out before, yes, the United States opts not to submit themselves to their jurisdiction. Is that a problem? Well, this might seem to suggest it. I understand people are frustrated about situations like this, I don't really get a kick out of seeing people wrongfully detained. However, I will take it upon myself to channel people's frustration in the proper direction and in this case it is simply not a sound basis for the "America is fascist" argument to use this as evidence. It's simply a matter of judicial procedure that has existed since before there were terrorists (or the closest thing you had were the Barbary Pirates).

 

[jameson]

Abduction and detention of suspected terrorists is indeed foreign policy whether you want to call it that or simple prosecution of war or the military assets of a country. In the United States, the Executive branch and not the judicial branch oversees the operation of the armed forces. You might as well have someone in Iraq file a lawsuit in the U.S. Courts arguing damages from the invasion.

And this is the insidious thing about the so-called War on Terror; in regular wars, you have some rules, such as the Geneva Conventions which among others specify who is a combatant and who isn't: if you aren't a soldier, you're pretty much automatically classified as being a civilian. If a civilian commits a crime, there's quite the apparatus of laws to charge and convict them. If you're a soldier, you can get shot at or detained for as long as the war lasts.
In the 'War on Terror'. all bets are off. There are no discrete points in time at which you could say it started, or when it will end Anyone can be classified an enemy combatant at the whim of belatedly set up military tribunals with limited or no rights for the defendant, and Mr. El-Masri didn't even get that far. The analogy with the war in Iraq is spurious, because it started as a war between sovereign nations (and the Iraqi government could conceivably sue the US in the International Court of Justice, given that the invasion could be said to have violated the UN Charter's prohibition on wars for any other reason than self-defense).

The U.S. and Germany may indeed have treaties in place and I am not familiar with the facts of this situation. Did Germany try to contact the U.S. in regards to his detention? In the other thread when I said there are other channels aside from the U.S. courts, that is precisely what I meant: the German government steps in and says: "Hey, release our citizen." Not everything should be decided/debated in the U.S. court system. If there lacks another effective venue to handle things, that is unfortunate; however, it is NOT the fault of the U.S. court system.

Germany didn't contact the US during Mr. El-Masri's detention for the simple reason that it was quite unaware of it until after the fact, see the Der Spiegel article I linked to in the other thread. The article also points out that the then German government wasn't really interested in jeopardizing its relations with the US over Mr. El-Masri. However, at the time, even such a senior US government official like Condi Rice said the courts could handle the resolution:

When mistakes are made, we work very hard to rectify them. I believe that this will be handled in the proper courts, here in Germany and if necessary in American courts as well.

( via Washington Monthly)

The flaw in the US court system here is that as soon as the magical words 'National Security' are mentioned, even US Courts apparently lose the ability to rule on any kind of official misconduct. If I were an American, I would be worried.

 

[Adler17]

I did not remark that thread. Indeed I will post my reply there. This thread can be closed.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171484

Adler