WASHINGTON,
December 3, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A US civil
rights group plans to file a lawsuit against the CIA on behalf of a
man abducted by the agency, beaten and transported to a secret prison
in Afghanistan.
The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) would file the suit in court in
Virginia on Tuesday, December 6, in what it described as the first
ever legal challenge to the CIA practice of abducting foreign
nationals for detention and interrogation in clandestine overseas
prisons, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
plaintiff, an "entirely innocent victim" who was eventually
released without charge, would attend a press conference the same day
in Washington, the ACLU said Friday, December 2.
The
lawsuit charges that CIA officials at the highest level authorized
agents to abduct the plaintiff, detain him incommunicado, beat him,
drug him and transport him to a detention facility in Afghanistan.
Reports
of clandestine CIA interrogation centers and transport flights for
terror suspects emerged in November, along with suggestions of
on-board torture sessions.
The
European Union has threatened sanctions against any of its member
states found to have been operating such secret prisons, or allowing
their territory to be used for the transport of the phantom detainees.
Complicity
The
lawsuit accuses the corporations owning and operating the airplanes
used to transport the man of complicity in assisting in the violation
of his civil and human rights.
Press
reports and human rights groups had revealed that the US was sending
terror suspects and “Islamic militants” to Arab countries
notorious for prison torture to extract information or confessions
from them, a practice known as rendition.
On
Wednesday, November 30, the Human Rights Watch published the names of
26 "ghost detainees" that it accused the US of holding and
possibly torturing in secret overseas locations.
The
watchdog charged in May that dozens of alleged “Islamic militants”
were shipped and ferried blindfolded to Egypt where they had been
tortured, held incommunicado and even disappeared.
In
June, Italian authorities ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents accused
of kidnapping a Muslim imam from northern Italy.
The
imam was moved to the US military base at Aviano in northern Italy,
and from there to a prison in native Egypt.
Renditions
were was first authorized by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 and used
by the Clinton administration to transfer drug lords and terrorists to
the US or other countries for military or criminal trials.
US
President George W. Bush has strongly defended such transfers as
“vital to the nation's defense”.
Since
9/11, the CIA has rendered more than 100 people from one country to
another, usually with well-documented records of abuse, without legal
proceedings, according tot the Washington Post.
