European Court of Human Rights (Creative Commons)

A panel of international judges announced on Thursday that they believe a German man was wrongly tortured by the CIA due to a case of mistaken identity.

According to ABC News, the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously that Khaled El-Masri was illegally detained after being taken off a bus in Macedonia in 2003. The ECHR ordered the Macedonia government to pay El-Masri 60,000 Euros, or $80,000, in damages.

"There's no question 60,000 Euros does not begin to provide compensation for the harm he has suffered," James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which is representing El-Masri, told ABC News today. "That said... for Mr. El-Masri, the most important thing that he was hoping for was to have the European court officially acknowledge what he did and say that what he's been claiming is in fact true and it was in fact a breach of the law... It's an extraordinary ruling."

Read the full story at ABC News.

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