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German 'tortured' by CIA
23/06/2006 19:15 - (SA)
Berlin - The German foreign ministry has denied accusations that it knew - five months earlier than previously admitted - about the case of a German national who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA.
Khaled el-Masri was arrested in Macedonia at the end of 2003.
He says he was handed over to the CIA, who flew him to Afghanistan and held him there until he was released in May 2004.
Investigators say they believe his account.
On Friday, Germany denied complicity in the affair. It said it had not failed to protect one of its nationals.
But Germany is one of 14 European states named in a report by a Council of Europe investigator this month, as having colluded with secret abductions of terrorism suspects by the US, in a process known as "extraordinary rendition".
A German telecommunications manager working in Macedonia at the time of el-Masri's arrest, told a parliamentary inquiry on Thursday that he had called the German embassy in Skopje to say he had heard of the arrest of a German man in the Balkan country in January 2004.
He was told the embassy was aware of the case.
'There was no knowledge of case'
Spokesperson for the foreign ministry, Martin Jaeger, said that since learning of the new witness on June 2, the ministry had sent a special investigator to Skopje and asked all employees there and at its headquarters if they had any knowledge of the Masri case.
"In all cases, the result was negative," he said. "We still believe the foreign ministry first learned of the Masri case on June 9, 2004, when it received a letter from Masri's lawyer."
If hard evidence emerged that the German government did know of Masri's fate soon after he was arrested, it would expose the authorities to the charge that they abetted his transfer to Afghanistan, or turned a blind eye.
The Council of Europe report cited the Masri case and the alleged use of German airports as "staging points" for the secret transfer of other suspects.
Human rights groups say the transfers, known as "renditions", are illegal and have been used to deliver suspects to countries that practice torture.
- Reuters
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