WASHINGTON, Dec 3: A US civil liberties group says it plans to sue the CIA in the case of a man who alleges he was kidnapped and sent to Afghanistan to be interrogated as a terrorism suspect.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in a release issued on Friday, alleged that ‘CIA officials at the highest level violated US and universal human rights laws’ when CIA agents seized an unidentified man and flew him to a secret prison in Afghanistan near Kabul called the ‘Salt Pit’.

The ACLU said the lawsuit would be the first legal challenge of a practice known as ‘extraordinary rendition’, and will be filed in court on Tuesday. It did not say when or in which country the alleged kidnapping took place.

At a news conference in Washington that day, the man represented by the ACLU will appear and state that CIA-authorized agents abducted, beat and drugged him before sending him to the secret Afghanistan facility, the group said.

The man is innocent, the ACLU said, and was held without notice for an undisclosed time before being released without ever being charged with a crime. An ACLU spokesman declined to give additional details about the case or the plaintiff.

The ACLU said the lawsuit would also involve unidentified companies that owned and operated airplanes used to transport the plaintiff. —Reuters