NYT Friday: An Algerian's dark odyssey through US rendition

RAW STORYPublished: Thursday July 6, 2006

The case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who was held as part of the United States' anti-terrorism rendition program, was revealed last year, and German and U.S. officials have acknowledged that he was erroneously detained by the United States. But the tale of the other, an Algerian named Laid Saidi, has never been told before, and it carries a new set of allegations against America's secret detention program, the NEW YORK TIMES reports Friday. Excerpts:
#
In a recent interview, Saidi, 43, said that after he was expelled he was handed over to American agents and flown to Afghanistan, where he was held for 16 months before being delivered to Algeria and freed without ever being charged or told why he was imprisoned. He acknowledged that he was carrying a fake passport when he was detained, but he said he had no connection to terrorism.

In his lawyer's office in Algiers, he held up two white shoes he said his captors gave him before setting him free in August 2004. The only other physical evidence he offered of his imprisonment were fading scars on his wrists that he said were from having been chained to the ceiling of a cell for five days.

While Saidi's allegations of torture cannot be corroborated, other elements of his story can be.

A criminal investigation of the deaths in 2002 of two Afghan detainees being held in the U.S. military detention center in Bagram, north of Kabul, found that prisoners were often shackled to the ceiling by their wrists for punishment, as Saidi said he was.

DEVELOPING.......