While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held at a black site and routinely interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other cruel forms of inhumane and degrading treatment and torture.
[3][4][5][6][7] After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest was a mistake and released him.
[8] He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, whom the CIA captured from 2001 to 2005, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks.
Ambassador to Germany, Daniel R. Coats, convinced the German interior minister, Otto Schily, not to press charges or to reveal the program.
He was detained by Macedonian border officials on 31 December 2003, because his name was identical (except for variations in Roman transliteration) to that of Khalid al-Masri, who was being sought as an alleged mentor to the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell, and because of suspicion that El-Masri's German passport was a forgery.
The decision to do so was made by the head of the al Qaeda division of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, on the basis of "a hunch" that El-Masri was involved in terrorism; his name was similar to suspected terrorist Khalid al-Masri.
"[12] He was dressed in a diaper and a jumpsuit, with total sensory deprivation, and flown to Baghdad, then immediately to the "Salt Pit", a black site or covert CIA interrogation center, in Afghanistan.
[18] Discussion over what to do with El-Masri included secretly transporting him back to Macedonia and dumping him there without informing German authorities, and denying any claims he made.
[19] El-Masri reports that Majid Khan, characterized by the Bush administration as a high-value detainee, was held in the Salt Pit at the same time as he was.
[20] Khan, a former resident of Catonsville, Maryland, US was held by the CIA for an additional three and a half years prior to being transferred to US military custody and Guantanamo on 5 September 2006.
[2] The ambassador asked the interior minister Otto Schily not to disclose the events, as the US feared "exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Mr Masri and others with similar allegations.
[16] The CIA flew El-Masri out of Afghanistan and released him at night on a desolate road in Albania, without an apology or funds to return home.
According to Die Welt Online, the problem arose over a dispute over an iPod that El-Masri had bought at a METRO warehouse club store back in April in the Bavarian city of Neu-Ulm.
[61] He had actually requested extended therapy for his client shortly before the incident, as El-Masri stated he felt threatened, and believed himself to be pursued by cars and strangers.
While the courts recognized that El-Masri had never breached the law before his CIA abduction, and ruled that he had been traumatized, they also stated that this did not now justify acts of violence.
His lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, explained that El-Masri believed he was pursued by the secret services, trying to break or recruit him, and he intended to file an appeal.
[65] El-Masri filed a complaint against the Macedonian government asking for damages for his "suffering, anguish and mental breakdown", due to his mistaken arrest, torture and abuse after being transferred to CIA custody.
The Court stated that El-Masri's allegations were supported by previous investigations into flight logs, as well as forensic evidence about his physical condition.
[11] In a statement before the Grand Chamber, the Open Society Institute, which had prosecuted the case, called upon the United States to apologize to El-Masri.
[68]Goldston also said, the court's ruling was "a comprehensive condemnation of the worst aspects of the post-9/11 war-on-terror tactics that were employed by the CIA and governments who cooperated with them.