Germany: Rendition - Khaled el-Masri's claim substantiated
01 May 2005
On 9 January this year, the
New York Times broke the story of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese decent, which has now become a delicate issue between the German and US authorities. El-Masri's ordeal started in December 2003, when he was travelling from Germany to Macedonia for a New Year's holiday, where he was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled and blindfolded. In January 2004, he was brought, most likely by CIA agents, to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but controlled by Americans. In June 2004, five months after first being seized, he was flown back to Europe and dumped at the Albanian border.
After starting a hunger strike in the Afghan prison, el-Masri claims he was met by a German official, who, when asked by Masri if the German authorities knew that he was imprisoned there, replied that he could not answer that question. El-Masri told Guardian journalist James Meek after his return that
It was a crime, it was humiliating, and it was inhuman, although I think that in Afghanistan I was treated better than the other prisoners. Somebody in the prison told me that before I came somebody died under torture. Those responsible have to take responsibility, and should be held to account.
The public prosecutor later said that the German security services did not admit to any knowledge of an agent visiting el-Masri in prison.
Although el-Masri was told by his kidnappers not to tell his story to anyone because "no one will believe it", Masri went to the police on his return to Germany, where he retold his story consistently to the authorities, Amnesty International and journalists.
It is widely believed that el-Masri's abduction is a result of mistaken identity and that US agents thought he was a man that Ramzi Binalshibh (himself held at an unknown location by the CIA for years and implicated in the 11 September attacks) identified as "Khalid al-Masri" who had apparently urged Mohammed Atta's 11 September pilot crew to be trained in Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Binalshibh allegedly also told the CIA that "al-Masri" had helped Atta's men establish contact with a senior al-Qaeda member in the city of Duisburg in western Germany's Ruhr region. However, statements alleged by the CIA to come from Binalshibh should not be taken as fact, firstly because his whereabouts is unknown and secondly because the methods by which the US authorities and their proxies extract information has been deemed neither legal nor trustworthy by German courts in the past (see
Statewatch vol 14 nos 3/ 4).
The
Spiegel newspaper has pointed out that with regard to existing evidence on el-Masri's involvement with al-Qaeda, in Germany, there:
isn't even enough for authorities to launch an investigation. The situation in the United States is completely different, though: Following [September 11], US President George W. Bush has authorized American agents to act outside of all internationally accepted legal norms in the fight against terror.
Although the CIA began its renditions program in the early 1990's, its use has considerably increased since the attacks of 11 September. According to the New York Times, human rights organisations, who criticise the policy as government-sponsored kidnapping, estimate that dozens of "high value" detainees are being held in secret locations around the world. An investigation by the
Washington Post last year suggested that the US held 9,000 people overseas in known prisons such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq and unknown ones run by the Pentagon, the CIA or other organisations.
CIA officials have acknowledged that the agency conducts renditions, but say they do not condone the use of torture during interrogations. However, the
Washington Post figure of 9,000 does not include those "rendered" to third-party governments (such as those in Egypt or