Posted on 12/09/2005 1:10:32 PM PST by Jean S
BERLIN (Reuters) - Information Germany shared with the United States may have prompted the CIA to abduct a German citizen and fly him to Afghanistan for interrogation as a suspected terrorist, a newspaper reported on Friday.
The report added to pressure on the government to reveal what officials may have known about the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who is suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment after being held in an Afghan prison for five months last year.
"It is possible that information we exchanged with the U.S. authorities alerted the CIA to Masri," an unnamed German security official told the daily Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
He said German authorities passed on information about Masri because he knew Reda Seyam, a German-based Islamist radical who was of interest to the Americans and is under investigation in Germany as a suspected supporter of a terrorist organization.
Spokesmen for the government and for German security agencies declined to comment on whether they had exchanged information on Masri with the Americans, but a senior government lawmaker said the report was plausible.
"I hope it's not true, but I'm afraid it could be true," Wolfgang Bosbach told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "That would be a nightmare."
Masri, who was initially detained in Macedonia and then flown to Afghanistan, has also testified that toward the end of his captivity he was questioned in prison by a native German speaker, whom he knew only as "Sam".
Government press officials declined to comment when asked about this incident, which has also fed speculation that German security officials knew of Masri's plight.
WHO WAS SAM?
In an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung released on Friday, Masri said "Sam" had refused to say who he worked for.
"I asked him if he was from the German authorities. He said: 'I don't want to answer that.' He also didn't want to say if the German authorities knew I was in Afghanistan," Masri said.
"He seemed very practiced, he behaved toward the Afghan guards as though he was familiar with the situation. His watch was just like those of the Americans. Perhaps he was working for the United States."
The case caused diplomatic embarrassment this week when Chancellor Angela Merkel said Washington had acknowledged it as a mistake, but U.S. officials denied making any such admission.
Reports that the CIA has run secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly flown terrorism suspects across the continent overshadowed a visit to Europe this week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, despite her assurances that the United States acts within the law and shuns torture.
A Munich prosecutor in charge of investigating Masri's disappearance said his office was considering asking the German government for more information on what it knew of his case.
Prosecutor August Stern told Reuters it would "certainly be interesting" to get more detail on a May 2004 meeting at which the U.S. ambassador told then Interior Minister Otto Schily that Masri had been held in Afghanistan but was being freed.
A U.S. official said this week that Masri was released after the United States realized it "no longer had evidence or intelligence to justify his continued detention".
The German government has referred the case to a parliamentary committee on the security services, but it faces strong pressure for an open investigation because the committee meets in secret and its work is not made public.
Everyone at the CIA should be fired and replaced with someone who knows his head from his a--
Just give the guy $1 million and be done with this mess already!
He'll get nothing and like it!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.