So you thought courts were for the administration of justice? Where did you get a crazy idea like that? That’s not how it works. Khaled al-Masri learned that the hard way today.

You might recall al-Masri as the Lebanese-born German citizen who was kidnapped at the Macedonian border, shipped off to Afghanistan, and tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency for months, before they finally admitted they had the wrong guy.

On December 31, 2003, al-Masri, who was living in Ulm, Germany, took a bus to Macedonia after having an argument with his wife. Border guards there found his name was similar to the name of someone on a terrorist watchlist and turned him over to the CIA station in Skopje. From there he was flown to Afghanistan and imprisoned in the now-defunct “salt pit” secret prison.

Al-Masri sued the government in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia last December, asking for monetary compensation, and most tellingly, an apology.

But the government invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent him from having his case heard, and despite the details of the case being widely reported in the foreign press, the judge agreed, and threw out the case today.

Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Joseph Sher said [May 12] in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the government cannot confirm or deny the allegations made by Khaled al-Masri, who sources have said was held by the CIA for five months in Afghanistan. His allegations, Sher contended, “clearly involve clandestine activity abroad.” Therefore, he said, “there is no way that the case can go forward without causing the damage to the national security.” — Washington Post

And that’s enough:

“While dismissal of the complaint deprives el-Masri of an American judicial forum for vindicating his claims… el-Masri’s private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets,” judge TS Ellis wrote. — BBC News

National security or not, injustice is served. It seems the only thing that would be damaged at this point would be Bush’s credibility. “We don’t torture,” he says. Yeah, right. Here’s your torture victim. Having it admitted in open court wouldn’t necessarily damage national security; the terrorists already know they can expect to get tortured. It would cause a lot of damage to the Bush administration, though.