In April 2008, the ACLU filed a complaint against the United States with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This action is still pending.
In Spain, prosecutors have investigated the operations of the CIA rendition team that rendered El-Masri, whose itinerary included a stop in Palma de Mallorca before proceeding to pick him up in Skopje. In May 2010, a Spanish prosecutor asked a judge to issue international arrest warrants against members of the rendition team.
The government of Macedonia has been asked numerous times to explain what happened to El-Masri: by the German prosecutors, Spanish prosecutors, the PACE inquiry, and the European Parliament inquiry.
On October 6, 2008, El-Masri filed a formal request with the Office of the Skopje Prosecutor to carry out a criminal investigation of his illegal detention and abduction and to bring criminal proceedings against those responsible. The request alleged that unnamed personnel of the Macedonian Ministry of the Interior were responsible for the unauthorized deprivation of his liberty and for the crime of torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The prosecutor took no action until the statutory time limit for commencing a criminal case expired in early 2009.
On January 24, 2009, El-Masri filed a civil lawsuit for damages against the Macedonian Ministry of Interior in relation to his unlawful abduction and ill treatment by MoI personnel in January 2004. The civil case is still pending at the Basic Court Skopje II.
The civil proceedings, however, are not capable of providing effective remedies for the violation of El-Masri's rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Open Society Justice Initiative assisted Macedonian lawyer Filip Medarski to litigate the case through the Macedonian courts, and is acting as co-counsel before the European Court of Human Rights in a case that was filed in September 2009 on El-Masri's behalf.
In October 2010, the European Court communicated the case to the Government of Macedonia. In January 2012, the case was referred to the Grand Chamber of the European Court, which will hold a hearing on May 16, 2012.
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