Khalid El-Masri is a completely ruined man, report global media. A decade after the CIA, with the assistance of Macedonian authorities, took him from Macedonia and to a secret detention center in Afghanistan, El-Masri hasn’t yet recovered.
Newspaper Sun Herald reported that the German of Lebanese origin is no longer part of the lives of his wife and children, while his friends and lawyer cannot find him. German intelligence announced that he is in “some pro-Western Arab country.”
Lawyer and trustee of El-Masri from Germany, Manfred Gnjidich, said that the last time he saw his client, he was completely broken, untidy, paranoid and completely alone. Twice he was arrested and sent to psychiatric clinic, and once he even ended up in prison.
The El-Masri case is one of 26 examples that are described in the report of the US Senate for the torture of people by the CIA, which later proved to be wrongfully detained and tortured. However, the report, which was released last week, didn’t reveal the consequences left by the months of torture on El-Masri’s life.
– I was shocked by the report on the torture. They knew and internally for years acknowledged making a mistake with Khalid. An entire decade, a decade in which his life was ruined, he demanded an apology, an explanation, a chance to continue with his life. They knew, they admitted it among themselves, but they didn’t share it with him – said Gnjidich.
A few weeks after the arrest, CIA realized that it made a mistake that it detained him in January 2004, but remained silent, as well as the Committee on Intelligence of the Senate, which learned of the case in 2007.
The report of the Senate doesn’t reveal how El-Masri was treated during the detention. For years he claimed that he was subjected to torture, that he was tied naked to the ceiling for days and couldn’t sit, that they kept him in complete darkness. Such a scenario is described in the other examples of torture in the report of the Senate.
