Khaled el-Masri, unjustly imprisoned and tortured by American CIA

The video above provides a background on the case and a personal account from the victim of false imprisonment and abduction. This crime has been ceaselessly ignored by the American government. The government has been denying any culpability of the incident and refusing to hear the case, but that time has ended.

This morning, the cover-up ended. The European Court of Human Rights held that Mr. Masri’s forcible disappearance, kidnapping and covert transfer without legal process to United States custody nine years ago violated the most basic guarantees of human decency. Notably, the court found that the treatment suffered by Mr. Masri in 2003 “at the hands of the special C.I.A. rendition team,” at an airport in Skopje, the capital of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, “amounted to torture.”

Perspective on London, 2005 by J.Y.

It is one thing to watch horrifying events like terrorist attacks unfold before your very eyes on a television screen in the comfort of your own living room thousands of miles away. It is a whole other thing to be smack-dab in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world that, in a matter of seconds, transforms into absolute pandemonium. Blood everywhere, sirens blaring, women and children screaming, men crying, smoke ascending to the sky like some ominous marking of destruction. That was London in 2005. I was 12 years old, and right in front of King’s Cross station (one of the most popular train stations in the city) when the bombs went off.

 

It turns out that four terrorists who identified themselves with the Islam religion were responsible for the attacks. Three bombs were detonated within ten minutes of King’s Cross Station and another one exploded on a double-decker bus. Fifty-two civilians were killed along with the suicide bombers, and approximately 700 others were wounded. Later that September, al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks in a video tape.

 

I am not religious by any means, nor do I possess immense knowledge about the Islamic faith (and I when I question the motives of the bombers, that does not also imply that I feel that way about those who practice the Islamic faith). The idea that a person could make themselves a martyr for their religion by murdering other people is something I cannot wrap my head around. Kahn states that martyrdom is “a test of faith, not a matter of consent,” implying that the bombers might have felt an obligation to prove their worth to their religious figure-head or the like (33). However, in the Christian faith (who advocates most strongly for virtues like forgiveness), when Jesus gives himself up to God, it is seen as the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good because it establishes principles of compassion and mercy, it is an anecdote recognized all around the world. Jesus was being tortured and eventually gave himself up to the Lord, succumbing to His almighty authority while later establishing the doctrine of Christianity. While the death of Jesus Christ can be seen as horrific from any outsider, it carries significant religious implications. Relating back to the terrorist attack, it was not a single “martyr” that wanted to send a message, but four. Instead of sacrificing ONLY themselves to advocate their religious faith or devoutness, they take the lives of 52 INNOCENT people with them.  So why would somebody feel so obliged to act in this way to convey their religious faith? Kahn believes that “sacrifice is compelled by the presence of the sacred…it does not emerge form within, as if it is the product of a personal decision, but neither can we say that it is forced upon us from without…at stake is not a romantic idea of an inner-self but the objective truth of the world and of the self in that world” (29). Were the bombers feeling obligated to provoke these attacks because they felt pressured? What greater good were they sacrificing themselves to? Was it a personal choice? Questions like these still puzzle me to this day. After all, watching the scene unfold before your young eyes leaves you able to mutter only one single word, “why?”

 

Removing the religious context from the attacks, and it is seen as simply a severe and brutal act of violence, murder. On top of that, the terrorists emotionally scarred those who were not victims but happened to be in the vicinity of the attacks. Myself included.

 

However, a ray of hope.

 

Kindness.

 

People of all different ethnicities, ages, countries, religions, you name it, worked together to ensure that everyone was safe. I watched an African-American man help a Chinese woman away from the damage, I watched a Middle-Eastern man throw his jacket over a white woman’s face to cover her eyes from the dust as he ushered her away. I watched compassion before my very eyes. Retrospectively, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Civilians associated with the Islamic religion were not crying victory up and down the streets. Wouldn’t that mean that these attacks were seen as tragic despite any religious affiliation? I strongly believe so. There is an idea of religion and then above that comes natural law; implying that there are basic human rights that everyone is entitled to. When these rights are violated, it strikes a chord with the hearts of everyone involved, not just appealing to a particular religion. Though the attacks on London may have been seen as a religious sacrifice by the bombers, watching compassion emerge literally from the ashes from people of all different backgrounds reminded me that, despite religious affiliation, people generally have a strong sense of human decency. While I still am haunted by the attacks (I cannot ride an underground train), the aftermath of the attacks resonates with me in one of the mot powerful ways.  Torture and sacrifice can empower one particular person or group of people, but when innocent civilians are victimized, the collective organization of compassion that stems from all sorts of people over-rides that. All of this happened in less than two minutes, but it’s something that still resonates with me to this day. This “spectacle of sacrifice” did initiate fear into those involved or watching, including myself, but failed immensely to ignite religious furor in it followers, but instead sparked the human compassion that lies in all of us (25).

 

Paul Kahn: Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror and Sovereignty (Law, Meaning and Violence)

“In Sacred Violence, the distinguished political and legal theorist Paul W. Kahn investigates the reasons for the resort to violence characteristic of pre-modern states. In a startling argument, he contends that law will never offer an adequate account of political violence. Instead, we must turn to political theology, which reveals that torture and terror are, essentially, forms of sacrifice. Kahn forces us to acknowledge what we don’t want to see: that we remain deeply committed to a violent politics beyond law.”