"Sometimes I cry and shake when I think about this"

[Rose Siding]

Extraordinarily Shameful Rendition

(T)he tale of.....an Algerian named Laid Saidi, has never been told before......"Sometimes I cry and shake when I think about this," he said in his first interview about his imprisonment......After being held for a week in a prison in the mountains of Malawi, Mr. Saidi said, a group of people arrived in a sport utility vehicle: a gray-haired Caucasian woman and five men dressed in black wearing black masks revealing only their eyes.

The Malawians blindfolded him, and his clothes were cut away, he said. He heard someone taking photographs. Then, he said, the blindfold was removed and the agents covered his eyes with cotton and tape, inserted a plug in his anus and put a disposable diaper on him before dressing him. He said they covered his ears, shackled his hands and feet and drove him to an airplane where they put him on the floor......

He said the interrogators focused on a telephone conversation they said he had had with his wife's family in Kenya about airplanes. But Mr. Saidi said he told them that he could not recall talking to anyone about planes.

He said the interrogators left him chained for five days without clothes or food. "They beat me and threw cold water on me, spat at me and sometimes gave me dirty water to drink," he said. "The American man told me I would die there."........

NYT

Saidi was held in a series of for 16 months in basement cells and prisons, due largely to an error in the translation of the word "tires". The plural in Arabic sounds like the word for "planes", just as the translator in one of the interviews was able to explain to the interrogators.

[annabanana]

1. We may never know

how many cases there are like this. People without a place to tell their stories...

[snappyturtle]

2. And the repukes wonder....

"Why do they hate us?"

[gratuitous]

3. "The American man told me I would die there"

Yep, defendin' freedom and democracy the world over through kidnapping, torture, wrongful imprisonment, and other cruelties and sadism. I'm so old, I remember when the United States actually worked against these sorts of things.

[izzie]

4. Sad story. I read it yesterday and it made me mad at my country

What ever they are doing does not seem to be right. I think they are just going to have to look at the things we have done around the world and try to fix that and give up on a war on a abstract thing to make war on. Since before WW1 terror as a way to get things has been in the works. Most likely longer but it is hard to fight such a thing and to say we will be at war for ever is silly. Lets starting looking at why these things are going on. Can we really control the Middle East? Heck they will get their own style gov and since the world is moving to wards one vote for rights it will come to them in their own way and time.

[mirandapriestly]

5. OMG

and the perpetrators call themselves Christians probably and go to one of those huge megachurches. I am so angry.

[Sydnie]

6. No one expects the AMERICAN Inquisition!

Such a sad take off on that old Monty Python skit ... but so fitting, isn't it?

[Judi Lynn]

7. It was a horror learning such a gross misunderstanding arose about him

due to the fact our investigators were working with a slipshod translation of something he said in a taped phone interview.

As soon as he explained it to the translator who repeated it to the investigators they never brought it up again.

It's a miracle this man was finally allowed to go home. According to the article, some of the men he met are in Guantanamo now.

It would be so hard to live day by day knowing your friends who were also thrown in prison the same way were being tortured still and there's nothing you can do about it.

What a goddamned shame. Remember, even though this man's legs and feet became wildly swollen from having to stand so long, Donald Rumsfeld tells us that he, himself stands up all day at his job and it doesn't hurt him a bit! Isn't that fascinating?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. "Gawd Bless America". "..Justice and Liberty for all".

"Land of the Free and Home of the Brave."

"A government of the people, by the people, for the people."

etc, etc, ad nauseum.

What a crock.

[burythehatchet]

9. Here's my question

Why wouldn't they just disappear him for good, rahther than let him go to tell his story?

[Judi Lynn]

10. Just a guess that too many people knew what had happened to him.

Can't kill ALL of them, probably. Too much of a hassle.

[bvar22]

11. Because the "story" is:

The Americans can do ANYTHING they want, anytime they want, to anyone they want, and there is not a fucking thing you can do to stop them!!!!!!.

Be Afraid,
Call them SIR,
Do what they tell you.

They let some go so that the message gets out.

[Reckon]

12. That's probably what happens to the real bad guys.

the others are just suspects.

[Carni]

13. Can someone explain to me *the plug in his anus* thing?

I am old and out of touch (ok not THAT old but apparently pretty out of touch)
what the hell is up with putting a plug in someone's *anus*?

What makes these creeps any different than the pedophile pervs they keep catching on dateline?

I hate to sound *un-American* or unappreciative but what exactly do we have serving in our military currently-- a bunch of J Edgar Hoover types?

This is just despicable (obviously)