The CIA's independent watchdog is investigating fewer than 10 cases where terror suspects may have been mistakenly swept away to foreign countries by the spy agency, a figure lower than published reports but enough to raise misgivings.
After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush gave the CIA authority to conduct the contentious operations, called "renditions," and permitted the agency to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or other administration offices.
The highly classified practice involves grabbing terror suspects off the street in one country and flying them to their home country or another where they are wanted for crimes or questioning.
PHOTO: EPA
Some 100 to 150 people have been snatched up since Sept. 11. Government officials say the action is reserved for those considered by the CIA to be the most serious terror suspects.
Bush has said that the transfers to other countries -- with assurances the terror suspects won't be tortured -- are a way to protect the US and its allies from attack.
"That was the charge we have been given," he said in March.
Still, some operations are being questioned.
The CIA's inspector general, John Helgerson, is looking into fewer than 10 cases of potentially "erroneous renditions," according to a current intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigations are classified. Others in the agency believe the number under investigation is many fewer than 10, the official added.
For instance, someone may be grabbed wrongly or, after further investigation, may not be as directly linked to terrorism as first believed.
Human-rights groups consider the practice of rendition a strategy to avoid the judicial processes long championed by the US.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, has sued the CIA for arbitrarily detaining him and other alleged violations after he was captured in Macedonia in December 2003 and taken to Afghanistan by a team of operatives in an apparent case of mistaken identity.
Speaking to reporters by video hookup from Germany, al-Masri said he was ``dragged off the plane and thrown into the trunk of a car'' and beaten by his captors in Afghanistan. Five months later, he was dropped off on a hill in Albania.
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