ACLU: U.S. Pressured Germany Not to Prosecute CIA Officers for Torture and Rendition

[kpete]

U.S. Pressured Germany Not to Prosecute CIA Officers for Torture and Rendition
Wikileaks Release Reveals Meeting About ACLU Client Khaled El-Masri

new - November 29 - The Bush administration pressured Germany not to prosecute CIA officers responsible for the kidnapping, extraordinary rendition and torture of German national Khaled El-Masri, according to a document made public Sunday night by Wikileaks. The document, a 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, describes a meeting during which the then-deputy chief of the U.S. mission to Germany, John M. Koenig, urged German officials to "weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S." of issuing international arrest warrants in the El-Masri case.

"To date, no top U.S. officials have been held accountable for their role in the Bush administration torture program."

The following can be attributed to Ben Wizner, Litigation Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

"We have long known that both the Bush and Obama administrations have shielded perpetrators of torture and rendition from accountability for their illegal acts. We now know that U.S. diplomats have also sought to shut down accountability efforts abroad. The United States' employment of diplomatic pressure to influence the legal proceedings of a democratic ally was improper and unseemly, particularly where the goal of that interference was to shield U.S. officials from accountability for torture.

"Even as many of our closest allies have acknowledged and addressed their official complicity in the Bush administration's human rights abuses, the United States has yet to reckon with its legacy of torture. The best way to restore our standing in the world, reassert the rule of law and strengthen our democracy is to support, not obstruct, meaningful accountability for torture."

The cable released by Wikileaks concerning El-Masri is available online at: cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2007/02/07BERLIN242.html
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/us-pressured-germany-not-prosecute-cia-officers-torture-and-rendition
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/11/29-8
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2007/02/07BERLIN242.html