Extraordinary rendition

[Mark A. Mandel]

My wife sent me this excerpt from an article in today's New York Times
(http://tinyurl.com/h358o), adding her own commentary and subject line.

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]


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Today's NY Times has an account from an Algerian man of being kidnapped in
Tanzania and shipped to Afghanistan for interrogation. Eventually, he was
not charged with anything, and was sent home again. While this guy has some
dicey assoications, and may not be pure as the driven snow, his treatment
was appalling. They seemed to think he was part of a terrorist plot
involving planes:


In prison, Mr. Saidi said, he was interrogated daily, sometimes twice a day,
for weeks. Eventually, he said, his interrogators produced an audiotape of
the conversation in which he had allegedly talked about planes.

But Mr. Saidi said he was talking about tires, not planes, that his
brother-in-law planned to sell from Kenya to Tanzania. He said he was mixing
English and Arabic and used the word "tirat," making "tire" plural by adding
an Arabic "at" sound. Whoever was monitoring the conversation apparently
understood the word as "tayarat," Arabic for planes, Mr. Saidi said.

"When I heard it, I asked the Moroccan translator if he understood what we
were saying in the recording," Mr. Saidi said. After the Moroccan explained
it to the interrogators, Mr. Saidi said, he was never asked about it again.

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