The applicant, Khaled El-Masri, a German national of Lebanese origin, was born in 1963 and is living in Ulm (Germany).
Mr El-Masri complains that the Macedonian police arrested him in December 2003, kept him locked for 23 days in a hotel in Skopje questioning him about alleged ties with terrorist organisations, and then handed him over to CIA agents who transferred him, blindfolded and chained, on a special flight to Afghanistan, where he remained in detention until May 2004. He submits that he was beaten, kicked and threatened while interrogated in the small, dirty, dark concrete cell in which he was kept in a brick factory, north of the Kabul business centre, known as the “Salt pit”.
Mr El-Masri further submits that in March 2004 he started a hunger strike to protest about being kept in detention without charges. In April of the same year, 37 days into his hunger strike, he claims that he was force-fed through a tube which made him severely ill and bedridden for several days. In May 2004, he allegedly started a second hunger strike a week before he was taken, blindfolded and handcuffed, onto an airplane first to Albania and then to Germany – to Frankfurt International Airport. Mr El-Masri weighed then about 18 kilos less that a few months earlier when he had left Germany.
Immediately after his return to Germany, he contacted a lawyer and has brought several legal actions since.
His case has been discussed at large within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. The position of the Government of “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” has been that Mr El-Masri had entered the country on 31 December 2003, had been interviewed by the police as suspected of travelling with false documents, had been allowed entry into the country and then had left over the border crossing into Kosovo.
Relying on Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment), Mr El-Masri complains in particular that he had been ill-treated in a hotel in Skopje, that he had been transferred to a CIA rendition team at the Skopje airport which had led to his ill- treatment in Afghanistan. Relying further on Articles 5 (right to liberty and security) and 8 (right to respect for private and family life), he alleges the direct responsibility of the “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” for the entire period of his captivity between 31 December 2003 and his return to Albania on 28 May 2004. In this connection, he complains that he had been detained unlawfully and kept incommunicado, without any arrest warrant, and that he had never been brought before a judge. The absence of a prompt and effective investigation by the Macedonian authorities into his credible allegations, he claims, had been in breach of Articles 3, 5 and 13 (right to an effective remedy). Lastly, he argues that he and the public, as a whole, had a right, under Articles 3, 5, 10 (freedom of expression and information) and 13 to the truth as to whether he had been subject to the secret rendition programme.
(from the official press-release prepared by the Registry Office of the European Court of Human Rights)