[quote=
The International Herald Tribune]FRANKFURT: In the most serious legal challenge yet to the Central Intelligence Agency's secret transfer of terrorism suspects, a German court has issued an arrest warrant for 13 people in the mistaken kidnapping and jailing of a German citizen of Lebanese descent.
Prosecutors in Munich said the suspects, whom they did not identify, were part of a CIA "abduction team," which seized the man, Khaled el-Masri, in Macedonia in late 2003 and flew him to Afghanistan. He was imprisoned there for five months and has said he was shackled, beaten and interrogated about his alleged ties to Al Qaeda before being released without charges.
His ordeal is the best-documented case of the CIA's practice of "extraordinary rendition," in which terrorism suspects were seized and sent for interrogation to countries where torture is practiced.
"This is a very consequential step," August Stern, the deputy prosecutor in Munich, said by telephone. "It is a necessary step before bringing a criminal case against these people."
The CIA has never acknowledged any role in Masri's detention, and an agency spokesman declined to comment Wednesday. The German government said it would not comment on the case, except to affirm the independence of the public prosecutor.[/quote]
This is just the first few paragraphs; hit the link for more.
I wonder if the Americans will cooperate, or quietly pull their guys out before the Germans can catch them.
Posts
Although I think they should be charged with something.
This happened in 2003? Those guys probably aren't even there anymore. It's as easy as never assigning them to Germany again and telling the prosecutor to take a flying leap.
You'd think, you'd be wrong. The average American seems to be more or less okay with it (or is at least willing to look the other way) because they figure it could never happen to them and if it makes them safer it's all good in the 'hood.
Now, if want this American's opinion on it, I say we should hand them over, along with everybody involved in the incident all the way up to the top. Which may well include our President. We should also hand Bush and Rumsfeld over to anybody inclined to try them for war crimes.
I'm guessing my opinion is not the norm, though.
Assuming they catch them in Germany, or can force extradition, neither of which is likely. The U.S. will refuse extradition, then turn around and expect Germany to extradite whoever the fuck we want, right now goddammit, because other countries have to respect our laws, but we don't have to respect theirs.
I'm right there with you! I think people (especially politicians and policy makers) need to start seeing consequences for their actions.
It´s more or less a political message.
I´m pretty sure stuff like that happened a couple of times during the cold war and the then German government simply nodded or even helped.
The present government couldn´t just hush it up, because the public sentiment is... well, anti-American would be too harsh, but "I do as I want" stuff like this is really frowned upon.
Plus the government had to send out a clear signal that they will not tolerate this stuff, not on our soil and especially not against one of our citizens.
Why now, you might ask?
Because there´s another case that involves America and a suspected terrorist very prominent in our media right now.
In that case the supected terrorist (German/Turkish citizen) was held captive in Guantanamo for a few years and was released IIRC last year.
Now comes the juicy part:
The suspected terrorist claims that the US government wanted to release him much earlier, but the German government didn´t want him released.
He further claims, that the German government kindly asked the US government to find something on him.
Most prominent figure in this whole scandal is our foreign minister.
I´ll stop rambling now, but I don´t think the timing for this arrest warrant is a coincidence.
I don't like our administration at all.
Imagine you've got 100 people. 99 are innocent, and one knows of a bomb that will go off in a crowded shopping mall at some point in the future. You know there is a bomb, you know it will kill a lot of people, but you don't know where or when. What do you do?
As a principle, I'd like to say I find torture abhorrent, but I've got to be honest: if they're torturing the right people and getting the right information, I don't really care. Obviously they aren't doing this with a 100% success rate, though.
If you want to know what really pisses me off as an American, I'll tell you: signing statements. Or more aptly, Bush's flagrant abuse of them.
Who? The people who actually took part in the torture? The kidnappers? Their superiors at the CIA? The people at the DHS that made it possible?
This is a high-level problem. Putting a handful of CIA guys in a German jail isn't going to change a single thing.
Ok. Now let's say you know there is a guy who is definately going to torture about 100 people, maybe to death.
Now does it matter whether he or she picks those people out of a mall or do you feel safer if they pick them racially out of the more tan members of society?
I'd never torture 99 people to get info out of the 1, and I really wish my government wouldn't do it for me. I'm not that scared of death...and I mean really, I have a much better shot of getting killed by a drunk driver than a terrorist. Hell, terrorism is only a couple notches above "anvil falling from the sky" on the list of things I worry about killing me.
And after spending a while in a place where things routinely explode, most Americans seem like a bunch of pansies to me.
Exactly. You know 9/11? About that many people died in car accidents in the US that month.
Worldwide, about that many people died of malaria that day, just like every other day.
As for the racial aspect, no, I don't favor racial profiling, but if good detective work leads to a situation where most suspects happen to be of middle-eastern decent, that's not particularly problematic (or even notable) in my eyes.
The point of the scenario isn't to torture all 100 people, it's that if you randomly start torturing people, you have a very small chance of success.
Ultimately, it comes down to interrogation techniques that rely on credibility. Any good interrogator will tell you that if he's left with no options but to inflict pain to maintain credibility, he's losing.
...and as for death by terrorism, that isn't really the concern. The concern is a terrorist group setting off a dirty bomb in downtown New York or Chicago. It's not loss of life, it's that a fairly simple-to-make weapon that is basically a lot of fertilizer with a couple pounds of powdered, enriched uranium (or plutonium, or any significant alpha/gamma source) will essentially render a major metropolitan city uninhabitable for decades. It's not the death toll that's the problem, it's the economic issue of having a major city essentially just switched off.
Seriously it's time to let it go already. it was awful but it's hardly the worst thing to happen ever.
I'm confused. Are you pro- or anti- torturing innocent people?
that would actually suck more. With terrorism, you'd get sympathy.
The headline in the Post the next day reads "Man Killed by Acme Product Failure." People chop the article out and hang it up at the office. They laugh over it. They think it's just the funniest thing. And you are forever remembered as the Anvil Man.
"I knew the Anvil Man and, ironically, he hated coyotes."
Yes.
My point is, I'm not against torturing those for whom there is no other means of extracting vital information, and recognize that doing so isn't always as precise as I'd like, and innocents may very well be tortured accidentally.
Where I fall on the scale, then, is a matter of effect. If we're throwing wide-ranging dragnets and torturing tens or hundreds of people to no avail (e.g. what we're doing with Guantanamo), that's utterly inexcusable. If we round up 5 people, 3 of which wind up having information that leads to the prevention of something as potentially destructive (again, economically) as a dirty bomb, well, then I'm more conflicted.
Two people tortured... devastation of a whole major metropolitan city...
Not a tough call, to be honest.
Any hypothetical "you know this guy is like, totally involved" scenarios are beyond masturbatory.
Well, I guess they sound scarier.
So how certain do you need to be that they know something before you should bring out the red hot pokers? You can ballpark it if you'd like. 50% certain? 1% certain?
What it comes down to is that you think torturing innocents is worth it, as long as we eventually get the info we need, even if it's not from them. So, yeah, you are pro-torture of innocents.
See, that should be a tough call. Torturing people en masse to save the city should be an easy call (as in, don't). Torturing a few people just to save a plane full of airline passengers should be an easy call (as in, don't). Torturing a couple people to save a city from devastation is about the only call that should be tough, at least in a civilized society. Personally I still fall on the "don't" side there, too.
Yeah, that means people die and bad shit happens in civilized society sometimes. Oh well.
And again, this is all assuming that if you torture people you're eventually going to torture innocent ones. Because, you know, real world and all.
Also, I'm pretty sure Elks is right...from what I've read "dirty bombs" aren't really a doomsday scenario. But even assuming they are, see the above.
EDIT: Again, from what I've read the kind of dirty bomb you are describing isn't as threatening as you're making it sound. If all they had was a bit of radioactive material and a conventional explosive then the affected area would likely be relatively small, and cleanup possible (though expensive). We're likely not talking about turning NYC into a ghost town for decades, we're talking about an extremely expensive and disruptive cleanup project lasting, at most, years.
Source. Furthermore, the FAS study on dirty bombs can be found here if you're interested in further reading.
They failed to realize that Jack Bauer is not bound by the laws of our world.
so people are stupid, and that is a bigger threat than the bomb itself. How about instead of the scare monger thing, they explain to folks that they are not that dangerious, plans are in place to deal with one, and the key part of those plans is people staying calm, calmly moving out of there area, and taking a shower.
As far as the current issue the OP posted, I think the CIA agents should be arrested and tried by Americans (Im genuinely hoping that what they did was "somehow" against our laws in some way...)
Ex-fucking-actly
If ceasing all torture we are engaging in lessens my safety somewhat, then I am very OK with that. I am infinetly more OK with that then whatever fucking horrible karma I may garner from having this shit done on my behalf by my government.
What if the tortured person was your mom, dad, sister, or brother?
That's not how it works at all though. Torturing innocent people doesn't do anything. Hell, there have been studies that say that torture is less effective than other interrogation techniques.
So easy to say when that innocent is some fucking sand ****** in Afghanistan and not your son.
I would weep at your ignorance if I weren't overcome with hatred at your stupidity.
While much of Europe may be angsty over the issue their leaders are consenting to US policy through silence. That this German court demands the arrest of America's august guard of national security proves we should have made the erstwhile sod-fest into another American state, along with Mexico and Cuba. Japan is alright so long as the tentacle porn keeps coming.
And what if your son's the one getting killed up in a terrorist attack that could've been prevented if a detainee was tortured?
Something doesn't add up... people aren't afraid of dying in a terrorist attack because the odds are so slim, but they're afraid of being tortured, or that someone they know may be? What do you suppose the odds of that, are, given that we have a lot more terrorists than people being tortured?
Think of the monetary aspect in quality of life terms: how many people need to lose their jobs, their homes, their businesses, or anything (possibly everything) else they own before it becomes worthwhile?
Again, I've got to reiterate, I only favor torture as a means to maintain credibility for interrogators in situations of great importance. There are far more effective means of extracting information from an individual that do not involve actual torture; physically injuring someone is a last resort.
I mean, aside from the ethical and moral problems, there are the facts that:
1) a person is tortured because it's assumed they must know something, leading to a person who may actually know nothing being tortured on end for who knows how long until it's shown they don't know anything.
2) A person may give false information to stop the torturing. This comes if they know something or if they don't. In both cases, they're just trying to get the torture to fucking end, although in the first they're protecting the real information and may be fooling the investigators, and in the second? well, god help the poor soul when they find out he/she lied about the information they gave just to get a reprieve.
Torture is by no means an effective means of extracting information and to claim it could be is naive at best, and moronic at worst