We are in trouble people, big trouble. Our government is not respecting the rights of its people. We must get new leaders, leaders that care about us. Leaders that care about the world. This is our job as citizens. It seems we picked up a German guy drugged him, tortured him and kept him imprisoned in another country. Why you might ask, because he was unlucky enough to have the same name as someone else. What the hell! Also our leaders have been denying access by the red cross to prisoners. American credibility is at stake here people, we are supposed to be the city on the hill, we are supposed to be the good guys. Did someone forget to tell our president that?

“On December 31, 2003, I boarded a bus in Ulm, Germany for a holiday in Skopje, Macedonia. When the bus crossed the border … Macedonian officials confiscated my passport and detained me for several hours,” al-Masri said in the statement.

The next three weeks, he said, he was held in a hotel room and repeatedly questioned about his life at home, including his contacts and his mosque.

Al-Masri said that on Jan. 23, 2004, seven or eight Macedonian men entered the room, handcuffed and blindfolded him, placed him in a car and drove him to what he believes was an airfield.

“I was taken from the car, and led to a building where I was severely beaten by people’s fists and what felt like a thick stick. Someone sliced the clothes off my body, and when I would not remove my underwear, I was beaten again until someone forcibly removed them from me,” he said in the ACLU statement.

Al-Masri said he was then dressed in a diaper and a tracksuit and put in a belt with chains that attached to his wrists and ankles. He claims he was blindfolded, hooded and marched onto a plane, where he says he was thrown to the floor and his arms and legs were secured to the sides of the aircraft. He said he was then drugged into a state of near unconsciousness.

BERLIN — Few people believed Khaled al-Masri when he first went public nearly one year ago with claims he was kidnapped by CIA operatives and abused in a filthy prison in Afghanistan.

But his allegations suddenly gained credence this week, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had admitted his abduction was a “mistake” and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit in a U.S. district court in Virginia on his behalf. He is seeking damages of at least $75,000.

He has since been propelled to the center of a campaign to end the alleged U.S. secret practice that human rights groups call “rendition to torture,” although Washington implicitly denies it tortures terrorist suspects held anywhere.

A large man with jet black hair and a deep, quiet voice, al-Masri was born in Kuwait in 1963 to Lebanese parents. His family later moved to Germany and in 1995 he became a German citizen. He married and settled in the southwestern city of Neu Ulm. He trained as a carpenter.

German officials have said although al-Masri belonged to a cultural center that has been under observation by authorities for suspected extremist Islamic activity, they never had evidence linking him to any sort of terrorism.

Al-Masri first went public with his story at the beginning of this year – roughly six months after he was freed – when he gave interviews to major U.S. and European papers including The New York Times. A detailed account of his ordeal emerged this week with the publication of his statement to the ACLU on the group’s Web site.

In that statement, al-Masri said he was abducted on December 31, 2003 and brought to a CIA prison in Afghanistan known as the “Salt Pit.” The statement is consistent with what he told German prosecutors in Munich, who opened an investigation earlier this year, and various accounts he has given to media.

“On December 31, 2003, I boarded a bus in Ulm, Germany for a holiday in Skopje, Macedonia. When the bus crossed the border … Macedonian officials confiscated my passport and detained me for several hours,” al-Masri said in the statement.

The next three weeks, he said, he was held in a hotel room and repeatedly questioned about his life at home, including his contacts and his mosque.

Al-Masri said that on Jan. 23, 2004, seven or eight Macedonian men entered the room, handcuffed and blindfolded him, placed him in a car and drove him to what he believes was an airfield.

“I was taken from the car, and led to a building where I was severely beaten by people’s fists and what felt like a thick stick. Someone sliced the clothes off my body, and when I would not remove my underwear, I was beaten again until someone forcibly removed them from me,” he said in the ACLU statement.

Al-Masri said he was then dressed in a diaper and a tracksuit and put in a belt with chains that attached to his wrists and ankles. He claims he was blindfolded, hooded and marched onto a plane, where he says he was thrown to the floor and his arms and legs were secured to the sides of the aircraft. He said he was then drugged into a state of near unconsciousness.

When the plane landed, he recalls it feeling warm.

“I learned later that I was in Afghanistan,” he said.

German prosecutors have said analysis of strands of al-Masri’s hair turned up traces of chemical elements naturally found in Afghan soil, corroborating his story.

He said he was held in solitary confinement in a small cell with no bed and one dirty blanket. Al-Masri said he was thirsty, but was offered only a bottle of “putrid water” in his cell.

“Ultimately, I was interrogated three or four times, always by the same man, with others who were dressed in black clothing and ski masks, and always at night,” he said. Two of the men identified themselves as Americans, he said.

“The man who interrogated me threatened me, insulted me, and shoved me. He interrogated me about whether I had taken a trip to Jalalabad (Afghanistan) using a false passport; whether I had attended Palestinian training camps; and whether I knew September 11 conspirators or other alleged extremists.”

Al-Masri said his persistent requests to meet with a representative of the German government, a lawyer, or to be brought before a court, were “repeatedly ignored.”

That March, he and several other inmates staged a hunger strike to protest their imprisonment, al-Masri said. Following more than a month without food, he alleges he was force-fed and allowed to meet with a man al-Masri identified as the American prison director, who informed him he would soon be released.

In early May, he met a native German speaker who identified himself as “Sam” and gave him the conditions of his release – one of which was “never to mention what had happened to me, because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret,” al-Masri said.

“On May 28, I was led out of my cell, blindfolded and handcuffed. I was eventually put on a plane and chained to the seat,” he said. “Sam informed me that the plane would land in a European country other than Germany, because the Americans did not want to leave clear traces of their involvement in my ordeal, but that I would eventually continue on to Germany.”

When the plane landed al-Masri says he was bundled into a car, still blindfolded, and driven up and down through the mountains of what turned out to be northern Albania. Officials there escorted him to the airport and he was put on a plane for Germany.

In the months that had passed, his wife had taken their children and moved away, thinking he would never come back. When he returned, she barely recognized him – 40 pounds lighter, with long hair and a shaggy beard. Al-Masri went public with his story roughly six months after he was reunited with his family.

Since then, he has continued to move closer to his ultimate goal.

“What I would like … is an acknowledgment that the CIA is responsible for what happened to me, an explanation as to why this happened, and an apology.”