On Aug. 19, 2009, a Learjet traveling from Cuba’s GuantÁnamo Bay touched down at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., carrying a dual Swedish and Lebanese citizen named Jamal Yousef. Twelve hours earlier, Yousef had walked out of a prison in Honduras, having been held on passport and weapons charges.
But as he left, he found a group of masked men clutching automatic rifles waiting for him. Later, in court filings, Yousef would say he was forced into the cab of a truck and driven off into the night. According to his account, Yousef was then ferried by helicopter to the waiting jet. Once inside, he saw other passengers – men who were not wearing masks – and asked, “Who are you?”
The men were Drug Enforcement Administration DEA special agents, part of the agency’s Special Operations Division SOD, which one criminal defense attorney described as “the Navy SEALs of the DEA.”
