WASHINGTON (CNN) — A German citizen who alleges the CIA mistakenly kidnapped, detained and interrogated him was denied a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court when the justices rejected his appeal for review Tuesday.
The German citizen is Khaled el-Masri, who was kidnapped in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve, 2003 by U.S. government agents and taken via secret “extraordinary rendition” to a prison in Afghanistan. El-Masri was beaten, humjiliated and drugged. When the U.S. could get nothing out of him, or recognized it was a case of mistaken identity — we don’t know because it’s a “state secret” — he was unceremoniously flown and dumped in a forest in Albania.