Khalid El-Masri - Timeline of Events

Timeline of Events

• A November 9, 2005 Reuters story stated that a German prosecutor is investigating El-Masri's kidnapping "by persons unknown", and that another lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, would be flying to the U.S. to file a civil compensation suit. The Reuters story says American authorities have neither confirmed nor denied any element of El-Masri's story.
• According to a December 4, 2005, article in the Washington Post, the CIA's Inspector General is investigating a series of "erroneous renditions", including El-Masri's. The article was written by Dana Priest, the journalist who broke the story on the covert interrogation centres — the "black sites".
• On December 5, 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the United States had acknowledged holding El-Masri in error.
• On December 6, 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union helped El-Masri file suit in the USA against former CIA director George Tenet and the owners of the private jets, leased to the US government, that the CIA used to transport him. El-Masri had to participate via a video link because the American authorities again confused him with al-Qaeda terrorist Khalid al-Masri and denied him entry when his plane landed in the United States. Some press reports attributed the Americans barring him entry due to his name remaining on the watch list. But his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, was also barred entry.
• On December 17, 2005, Front magazine published an article that said a member of a German Intelligence Agency had clandestinely passed a copy of El-Masri's dossier to the CIA in April 2004.
• El-Masri published a first-person account of his experience in the Los Angeles Times.
• A report on March 2, 2006, suggested that El-Masri may have been a leader of a radical, Lebanese Sunni islamist group ideologically affiliated with the Muslim brotherhood called "el-Tawhid" in the early 1980s, which fought Alawites in Tripoli during the Lebanese Civil War. The description of the group fits the Islamic Unification Movement, also known simply as "Tawhid". German reports assert that El-Masri himself reported his being a member of "El-Tawhid" or "Al-Tawhid" when he applied to Germany for refugee status, in 1985. The reference to "El-Tawhid" may have been confused with the group Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi lead, Al Qaeda in Iraq, used to be called "Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad". "Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad", the former name for Zarqawi's group, translates as the "movement for monotheism and struggle".
• On May 12, 2006, a U.S. federal court heard a government motion to dismiss the suit brought by El-Masri, claiming the trial could jeopardize national security.
• On May 18, 2006, U.S. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis, III dismissed a lawsuit El-Masri filed against the CIA and three private companies allegedly involved with his transport, explaining that a public trial would "present a grave risk of injury to national security." (This legal doctrine is known as the state secrets privilege.) Ellis also acknowledged that if Masri's allegations were true then he deserved compensation from the US government.
• The BND (German intelligence agency) declared on June 1, 2006 that it had known of El-Masri's seizure 16 months before Germany was officially informed of his mistaken arrest. Germany had previously claimed that it did not know of El-Masri's abduction until his return to the country in May 2004.
• On July 26, 2006, The ACLU announced that "it will appeal the recent dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Khaled El-Masri against the US government." According to ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, "If this decision stands, the government will have a blank check to shield even its most shameful conduct from accountability."
• On October 4, 2006 the Washington Post reported that Munich prosecutors were complaining that a lack of cooperation from US authorities was impeding their investigation into El-Masri's abduction. The article reports that Munich prosecutors have a list of the names, or known aliases, of 20 CIA operatives who they believe played a role in the abduction.
• On January 31, 2007 Munich Prosecutor Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld announced that warrants for 13 people were issued for suspected involvement in Mr El-Masri's rendition.
• On February 6, 2007, U.S. officials warn the German Government not to issue international warrants.
• On February 21, 2007, the German Government decided to pass the warrants to Interpol.
• On March 2, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the dismissal.
• On April 30, 2007, The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled as unconstitutional the tapping of the phones of El-Masri's lawyer by Munich's DA office. The DA had requested the tapping claiming they expected the kidnappers to contact the lawyer "to find a solution to the case".
• The real names of two of the pilots on the El-Masri rendition flight were revealed in June 2007, in the (German language) proceedings of netzwerk recherche (NR), a German association of investigative reporters, as Eric Robert Hume (alias Eric Matthew Fain), and James Kovalesky. For several months previously, both U.S. and German newspapers had been dropping heavy hints as to the pilots' true identities. In July 2007, SourceWatch identified the third pilot on the El-Masri flight as Harry Kirk Elarbee, on the basis of an automated search of the FAA airmen database and corroborating information previously published in the press.
• In June 2007 the ACLU filed a petition for certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court.
• On July 12, 2007 the European Parliament issued the 2006 Progress Report on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in which the authorities of Macedonia were urged to cooperate in the investigation of the circumstances of the abduction.
• In September 2007, the German Government decided not to ask the US officially for extradition as an unofficial request had met a negative reply.
• On September 5, 2007, the Constitution Project filed an amicus curiae, a legal brief in support of his petition for certiorari.
• On October 9, 2007, the ACLU petition was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court without comment.
• On June 10, 2008, a new civil suit was launched by German and US civil rights lawyers representing Mr El- Masri seeking to force the German government to reconsider the extradition requests it issued in January 2007.
• In May 2009, Prosecutors attached to the Spanish National Court asked for an arrest order for thirteen CIA agents involved in the kidnapping.
• In May 2012, the European Court of Human Rights held a hearing on the case between El-Masri and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (application number 39630/09))
• On December 13, 2012, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Mr. El Masri had been tortured by the CIA while in the hands of the Macedonian Police.