The
plaintiff, Khaled el-Masri, 42, a German of Lebanese descent, was refused entry
to the United States after arriving Saturday in Atlanta on a flight from Germany to appear at the
news conference Tuesday in Washington where the lawsuit was announced. Instead,
Mr. Masri addressed the conference from Germany by video link, describing how
he was seized on the Serbian-Macedonian border, kicked and hit, photographed
nude and injected with drugs during five months in detention in Macedonia and
in Afghanistan.
"I
want to know why they did this to me," said Mr. Masri, whose German was
translated into English by an interpreter. Now living with his wife and
children in Germany, Mr. Masri, who has worked as a car salesman and carpenter
but is currently unemployed, said he had not fully recovered from the trauma of
his experience.
"I
don't think I'm the human being I used to be," he said.
In
an interview on Tuesday in Germany, Mr. Masri said his weekend encounter with
immigration officers in Atlanta made him briefly fear that his ordeal in 2003
and 2004 might be repeated.
"My
heart was beating very fast," he said. "I have remembered that time,
what has happened to me, when they kidnapped me to Afghanistan. I have
remembered and was afraid."
A
spokeswoman for United States Customs and Border Protection, Kristi Clemens,
confirmed that Mr. Masri was denied entry. She said he was turned away based on
information received from other American agencies, but she declined to describe
the information or to say whether Mr. Masri's name had again been confused with
that of a wanted operative of Al Qaeda, the reason officials have given for his
mistaken detention in 2003.
The
lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., by lawyers for
the American Civil Liberties Union.
Since
it was first reported in January by The New York Times, the Masri case has
often been cited as an example of tough American counterterrorism policies gone
awry.
Mr.
Masri's lawyers allege in the lawsuit that Mr. Tenet learned of the mistake but
left Mr. Masri in detention for two more months before having him set free at
night on a hillside in Albania in May 2004.
The lawyers argue that even though he is not an American citizen,
the treatment of Mr. Masri violated his right to due process under the Fifth
Amendment as well as the Geneva Conventions and other bans on torture. He
is suing under the Alien Tort Statute, adopted in 1789, which permits
noncitizens to sue in the United States for violations of international norms. The suit seeks unspecified monetary
damages "in an amount over $75,000."
His
lawsuit is the latest development in a legal assault by human rights groups on
the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine operations to detain, transport
and interrogate suspected terrorists since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The
lawsuit appears to be the first to single out a web of companies that operate a
fleet of aircraft believed to be used by the C.I.A. The companies identified in
the suit were Aero Contractors, a Smithfield, N.C., company that provides crews
and maintenance; Premier Executive Transport Services of Dedham, Mass., which
in 2003 owned the Boeing business jet that the lawsuit says was used to take Mr.
Masri from Macedonia to Afghanistan; and Keeler and Tate Management L.L.C., of
Reno, Nev., which owns the jet now.
The
lawsuit could force the C.I.A. to acknowledge its secret relationship with the
companies, said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. He said
the A.C.L.U. took the case to penetrate what he called the "culture of
impunity" in the Bush administration for human rights violations and to
force the C.I.A. to abandon practices in conflict with American values.
A
spokesman for Mr. Tenet, who served as C.I.A. director from 1997 to 2004, said
he had no comment, as did a spokesman for the C.I.A.
Robert
W. Blowers, an executive at Aero Contractors, said, "I don't have anything
to say about it." Attempts to reach representatives of the other two air
companies were unsuccessful.
Michael
Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland who teaches a course
on the law of counterterrorism, said Mr. Masri's lawyers faced "a steep
uphill climb" in making their case in the Eastern District of Virginia and
the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in
Richmond, Va. But Mr. Greenberger said the Supreme Court, in a ruling last
year, suggested the Alien Tort Statute might apply to claims of torture.