Scott Horton at Harper's Magazine is stating that, "Prosecutors attached to the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid are reportedly requesting that Judge Ismael Moreno issue an order for the arrest of thirteen CIA agents involved in an extraordinary rendition operation from 2004."
The agency has come under substantial investigation over the past few years for their gross incompetence and servitude to the Bush junta's policies of extrajudicial kidnapping, torture, and murder. For example, only last year 23 American intelligence officers were found guilty, in absentia, of the kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of an Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar, who the CIA agents seized off the streets of Milan, took to Egypt, and then subsequently tortured.
Similarly, in 2004 another individual named,
Khaled El-Masri, a greengrocer from Neu-Ulm, Germany, [was] seized by the United States as a result of mistaken identity while he was on vacation in the former Yugoslavia. El-Masri was placed on a CIA-chartered jet that arrived in Macedonia from Palma de Majorca in January 2004, en route ultimately to Afghanistan. It appears that Majorca was used regularly as a refueling and temporary sheltering point for the CIA, with the knowledge of the prior conservative government. While held in the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt Pit, El-Masri was apparently tortured during extensive interrogations before intelligence officers realized that they had seized the wrong man. The Washington Post reported that CIA agents, fearing the consequences of releasing him, argued for his continued detention and in fact held him for at least several weeks after his release had been ordered. Condoleezza Rice, then national security advisor to President Bush, intervened and directed his release. El-Masri’s CIA abductors entered Spanish territory using forged British passports, according to the prosecutors.
Criminal proceedings are also underway in Germany on similar charges of kidnapping and torture.
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