‘We expected from the very first to be sold out by the politicians,’ says Scheuer. ‘Everyone knew that we would get sold out at some point.’
As usual, the CIA would do what the White House told it to do, then end up being hung out to dry.
Upon joining the Agency, today’s operations officers are instructed to take out malpractice insurance, just in case someone orders them to do something that turns out at a later date to be illegal.
Another former senior officer explains. ‘“What we want you to do is grab this Arab in Milan.” So you say, “Yes, sir.” You go grab the Arab in Milan, because that’s what your instruction was to do. And then you move on to the next operation, not thinking that the politicians haven’t engaged with the Italian government to make sure that this is legal, because you think it is legal.’ He snorts. ‘And now I have to hire an attorney and defend myself in an Italian criminal court.’
Khaled el Masri is unimpressed by the various sufferings of the US intelligence community. For him, the issue remains personal and, as yet, unresolved. When the ACLU filed his case in December 2005, they had planned for him to be present, to make a statement. Together with his lawyer Manfred Gnjidic, he flew to the United States the week the papers were due to be served. He never made it. Apparently still on a terrorist watch-list, The Egyptian was turned away the moment he landed in Atlanta and returned to Germany the same day. No reason was given. He had to make a statement by live satellite link.
The appearance didn’t do much good. In March 2006, the US government made a formal claim that the case be dismissed on the basis that taking it to trial would jeopardize ongoing intelligence operations. The court agreed.
A month later, ACLU appealed, arguing that the facts around the el Masri case had been so widely reported they could hardly be considered secret any more. The court disagreed, asserting that its hands were tied by the law regarding state secrets. The appeal was dismissed.
Not that it was entirely without merit. Federal District Judge T S. Ellis made that clear: if what el Masri was asserting was true, he stated, ‘all fair-minded people must. . . agree that El Masri has suffered injuries as a result of our country’s mistake and deserves a remedy’. But this remedy would have to come from Congress or the Executive. Once again, when it came to rendition, the judicial system was powerless.
More investigators came on board. In April, the European Parliament visited Macedonia to investigate the case. Two months later came a Council of Europe report on rendition, which reported that el Masri’s story was accurate. ‘The case of Khaled el Masri,’ according to the Council’s Special Rapporteur Dick Marty, ‘is exemplary.’ German Parliament launched an investigation. In November, the ACLU case was formally appealed.
While awaiting the outcome, lawyers learned that German prosecutors had formally issued arrest warrants for thirteen individuals identified as having been on the N313P flight from Macedonia to Afghanistan. The US State Department refused to comment and the Department of Justice refused to assist German investigators. The CIA refused to say anything at all.
In March 2007, three judges from the Fourth Circuit Court published a unanimous opinion on the el Masri case, affirming the previous dismissal on the basis that ‘central facts [of the case] . . . remain state secrets’. Again and again the case was batted out of court on the basis that intelligence affairs were secret and should remain so. ‘The only place in the world where Khaled el Masri’s allegations cannot be discussed,’ stated ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, ‘is in a federal courtroom.’
For el Masri, the continuous trail of rejections led to further issues. In January 2007, he attacked a vocational training officer who was teaching him to drive a truck. The officer, who had accused him of missing classes, ended up in hospital. Four months later, attempting to return an apparently faulty iPod to the shop from which he had purchased it, he was refused a refund. Concluding that the lady behind the counter was being disrespectful, he spat at her. Shortly afterwards, he set fire to the shop, causing 500,000 euros worth of damage. He was immediately picked up and sent into psychiatric care. According to his lawyer Manfred Gnjidic, el Masri, who had as yet only received superficial help regarding his traumatic experiences, had had a mental breakdown. He received a suspended sentence for arson.
Further court rejections followed. El Masri became despondent. On 11 September 2009, he struck again, storming into the office of Neu-Ulm’s mayor to demand assistance with his case. He was ejected. Half an hour later he returned, burst into the mayor’s office and attacked him with a chair. Again, he was arrested. Again it was argued that his actions were the result of his inability to access justice. This time, however, he was already on a suspended sentence. On 30 March 2010, he was sentenced to two years in prison. Led out of court, el Masri was heard to comment, ‘Do whatever you want.’
To those involved in the rendition, el Masri’s imprisonment was a vindication, of sorts. Repeated outbursts were evidence of his violent temperament. Society needed protection from men like this. That his behaviour might have been the result of his treatment was irrelevant; the world was a safer place without Khaled el Masri on the streets.
Finally, The Egyptian was where he belonged.
Exposed to the media glare, Premier Executive Transport Services shut up shop. On 1 December 2004, the company hastily sold both of its rendition aircraft. Boeing Business Jet N313P was bought by Keeler and Tate LLC, based in Reno, Nevada. Only, the company wasn’t really based in Reno, Nevada. According to an investigation by the European Parliament, Keeler and Tate was a ‘CIA shell company . . . without premises, without a website, whose only property was the Boeing 737’. The plane’s tail number was changed to N4476S.
But old habits die hard. Six weeks after its re-registration, N4476S was caught reliving the glory days in Mallorca. The Association of Aeronautical Photographers of Mallorca was on the case, snapping a series of photographs of the CIA plane. They were immediately posted on the Internet.
7
Friends in Low Places
All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
George W. Bush, January 2005
The truck, a khaki ZIL-131, was Russian. This was good: the Russians, after all, knew a thing or two about industrial machinery. Crucially, they understood the importance of weight: a heavy truck needed to be heavy. The ZIL was. Nearly four and a half tons unloaded, this one – full of armed dissidents – was considerably heavier. This also was good: if you’re planning on ramming your way in to a high-security prison, weight is critical.
Moments before the truck crashed into the prison’s isolator gates, its occupants let out a cry. Witnesses heard a single word: ‘Ozodlik!’ (‘Freedom!’) Government spokesmen would later argue that the raiders had shouted something rather different: ‘Allahu akbar!’
The discrepancy between these two accounts, though important later on, was irrelevant at the time: whatever the raiders shouted, at twenty minutes past midnight on 13 May 2005, the driver gritted his teeth, revved the engine and dropped the clutch. The vehicle surged forward.
The ZIL’s weight carried it into the gates, which resisted for a moment before buckling and crashing open, admitting it into the prison courtyard. The insurgents were inside. The biggest prison break in Uzbekistan’s history was underway.
Three floors up in the main cell block, Sardor Azimov was trying to get to sleep. As usual, the prison lights had been turned off at 10 p.m., but it was a humid night and the businessman was having trouble dropping off. Cramped into a windowless cell with four other men and only a pomegranate-sized hole leading into the prison’s main corridor for ventilation, he found the atmosphere stifling. The moment he heard the crash of a truck ramming the prison gates, he sat up in his bunk.
‘I heard these very loud noises, then gunshots. I thought it might be the beginning of a war.’
/> Azimov’s instinct was correct. According to some, it very nearly was.
Downstairs, in the prison’s main corridor, the raiders worked fast, breaking into the administrative offices, forcing open the guards’ safes and retrieving the cell keys. They then swept through the building, opening the cells and releasing the prisoners. Within an hour they had reached the third floor. Unable to see anything through their ventilation hole, Azimov and his cellmates listened intently as the units were breached one by one. When the men reached theirs, though, there was a problem. No key. They set to the door with crowbars, prising it from its hinges, flinging it aside and confronting the startled prisoners.
‘You’re free!’ one of the raiders told Azimov. ‘Get out!’
In the corridor inmates milled around listlessly, too shocked to react. Then someone suggested it might be a good idea to get moving and they were herded downstairs. Azimov stepped out into the night air and took his first breaths as a free man.
‘I was very emotional, very excited. Everyone was. We’d never seen anything like this before.’ As the prisoners wandered out of the compound into Eski-Osh Street, Azimov noticed two prison guards, tied up but otherwise unharmed. There was cheering, but also a sense of uncertainty. He turned to a friend.
‘What are we supposed to do now?’
* * *
That night, as the prison break was getting underway, senior officers of the Eurasia Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) were holding their annual strategy meeting in New York. It wasn’t long before the discussion turned to Uzbekistan, where all present agreed the situation was not pretty. This in itself was nothing new. The republic, ruled – apparently in perpetuity – by the dictator Islam Karimov, ranked among the bottom five countries in the world for human rights, alongside some of the planet’s most toxic pariah states: when it came to the routine violation of political and civil rights, Uzbekistan lay only slightly ahead of North Korea and Burma. On economic freedom, the country was 149th in the world, alongside Zimbabwe. Currently, 4,000 Uzbeks were incarcerated for political crimes.
Arbitrary detention, beating, rape, electric shock, fingernail extraction, suffocation: there was little President Karimov’s Ministry of the Interior baulked at when it came to those it viewed as a political threat. Not long earlier, HRW officers had faced the unpleasant task of viewing the bodies of a pair of men, jailed for religious extremism, who had died after apparently provoking a fight in Jaslyk Prison. Asked why both corpses were covered in burns, the Uzbek authorities declared the men had been trying to convert other prisoners to Islam, and had had pots of tea thrown at them. The truth was more prosaic: they had been placed in vats of water by their interrogators and boiled alive.
It was the kind of barbarity that could happen only in Uzbekistan. Whenever the country came up in meetings, HRW staff sighed. ‘Every year when our conversations about Uzbekistan started, there was a standard introduction,’ says Sasha Petrov, the deputy director of HRWs Moscow office: ‘The situation is bad and getting worse.’
This time the prognosis was unusually dire. Sources in Central Asia had warned Petrov that something was afoot. ‘They basically said we are sure that something is going to happen,’ he recalls. ‘But they didn’t give us any details about what it was.’ Someone had an idea that there might be an uprising planned for the autumn, but the information was maddeningly incomplete. The tenor of the meeting, however, was clear. ‘There’s going to be a crisis in Central Asia,’ the Uzbekistan officer told her colleagues. ‘Something is going to blow’
HRW staff were especially interested in a number of ongoing Uzbek cases. At the top of the list was a situation that had developed in the city of Andijan, 250 kilometres east of the capital Tashkent. Ten months earlier, a group of influential businessmen had been rounded up and arrested. Initially, charges had related to financial irregularities, but they gradually transmogrified into ‘religious extremism’ – a catch-all phrase that, under Karimov, could mean anything from being a member of al-Qaeda to generally annoying the President. The men were facing lengthy prison sentences. Some had been tortured. One of them was Sardor Azimov who was, even as the HRW meeting was taking place, being led away from his cell and into the Andijan night.
Azimov was one of Uzbekistan’s bright young things. After leaving school in the early 1990s, he had gravitated towards entrepreneurship, bartering, buying and selling in the markets around Andijan. By 1997, he was one of the city’s leading traders and was making regular trips abroad to source merchandise: shoes, clothing, office furniture, building materials, there was little Azimov couldn’t buy, import, then deliver at a lower price than anyone else. Polite, well spoken and impeccably turned out, the young businessman created a good impression wherever he went. In post-independence Uzbekistan, he was a rarity: a man capable of inspiring – and maintaining – trust. In 1998, he acquired a handful of factories, hired a staff of thirty and moved into production himself. He then bought a spacious house and a new car for cash, got married and began to enjoy the fruits of his labour. He was twenty-two.
Doubtless, Sardor Azimov’s success was due to his personal attributes, but another factor was at play. He wasn’t working alone. In 1994, he had teamed up with a group of like-minded businessmen who had decided to revolutionize Andijan’s economy. Working on a blueprint created by Akram Yuldashev, a local schoolteacher and mathematician, the group had formed a union dedicated to quality trust and mutual co-operation. The idea was simple: businessmen would pool their resources to create the kinds of enterprises that would flourish. Instead of competing, they would co-operate.
‘The main focus was on quality,’ says Nodir Mahmudov, one of the group’s founders. ‘The old Soviet system was rubbish. We made products that people actually wanted. We were ready to make anything – but it had to be good.’
Shortly after the group’s foundation, one of its founders set an example by donating a two-hectare plot in Andijan’s Bogi Shamol district for communal use. Factories were built and the group began producing baked goods, sweets and furniture. Since quality consumer products were in short supply in Uzbekistan, the enterprises flourished.
‘When we started, and started to be successful, other businessmen began to join us,’ says Mahmudov. ‘Construction people. Handicrafts people. Carpenters. Lots of people.’
Because state-owned banks were unreliable, union funds were kept privately. New business proposals were debated by the group’s members. Once one was adopted, all would work together to develop it. There were no formal agreements between members. Everything was done on the basis of trust. The group had no name, but those who belonged called each other ‘birodars’ (‘brothers’).
Success came quickly. One of the main tenets of the group was that wages should be paid on time. Since they were not beholden to Uzbekistan’s state banks, which often ran out of cash, this was easy to arrange. Quality goods led to greater demand, which led to greater production, which led to more quality goods. The money poured in and wages leapt. By the late 1990s, the union was paying its staff ten times the standard state salary. There were other perks, too. If employees got married, the company paid for the wedding and helped them to raise the cash for a flat.
‘We never advertised for workers,’ says Mahmudov. ‘But our employees told all their relatives and their friends. More and more people started coming to work for us.’
The group then diversified. During their travels abroad, the businessmen discovered that successful enterprises took care of their employees – something that didn’t happen in Uzbekistan.
‘We understood that we had to look at the social problems in the lives of our employees, otherwise we might not be able to expand the company’ says Azimov.
The group set up a kindergarten, a series of summer camps and a petting zoo where children could learn to ride horses. It also built private doctors’ and dentists’ clinics and a hospital for staff and their families.
‘We started building schools,’ says Mahmudo
v. ‘We taught them the construction business, how to drive, how to use a computer. We taught them how to speak English. Girls were taught how to bake and sew’
News of the Andijan success story spread fast. Businessmen from other cities approached the group asking for advice and in 1995 the union opened branches in Kokand and Tashkent. By the end of the decade, the Government itself was a customer. New colleges and university buildings were constructed by the group. Furniture for bureaucrats’ offices came from Andijan. When senior civil servants held parties, the Andijanis would provide the catering.
‘They saw that what we were making was good-quality stuff says Mahmudov. ‘So they started ordering from us.’
It was going so well, it had to go wrong.
In 2003, members of the group were summoned to the Office of Entrepreneurs in Tashkent. Ostensibly, the meeting was an opportunity for the Government to ask the group its views about tax reforms. Actually, members were grilled about what they were up to. Where was all this money coming from? At this point, the Andijan union overplayed its hand.
‘We told them all about what we were doing, the social and educational reforms,’ says Azimov. ‘I explained about the business end of the union, how we had opened a private hospital and a kindergarten and a horse-riding club for kids.’ Mahmudov offered the government representatives a proposal. ‘We offered our system to the President: if we used this system in Uzbekistan, there would have been no unemployment.’
Whether it was the grandiose nature of these claims or the fact that the group’s leaders had recently refused to pay a substantial bribe to the Andijan City Prosecutor’s Office is unclear. Either way the Uzbek regime, startled by the group’s influence, decided to step in. In a country with widespread discontent, extreme poverty and no avenues for legitimate political opposition, the union represented a threat. Shortly after the conference, Uzbek authorities demanded the group’s business plans and asked where they had come from. The union’s leaders said they had been drawn up by Akram Yuldashev. Since Yuldashev was serving time for political dissent and religious extremism, this was all they needed. It was time to take down the Andijan operation.
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