|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
June 22nd, 2006 - Witness in CIA
Inquiry Told Germans of Missing Man |
|
Witness in CIA Inquiry Told
Germans of Missing Man By Mark Trevelyan Reuters Thursday, June 22, 2006; 2:07 PM Berlin - New evidence
emerged on Thursday that German authorities may have known in early 2004 of
the disappearance of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who says he was
kidnapped and tortured by the CIA. Wolf-Dietrich Mengel, a
telecoms manager who was working in Macedonia at the time, said he telephoned
the German embassy there in January 2004 to say he had heard of the arrest of
a German citizen in the Balkan country. "I phoned the German
embassy and was told 'we know that'," Mengel told a German parliamentary
inquiry into the role of the security services in the war on terrorism and
invasion of Iraq. He said he learned of the
arrest through a fellow employee at Macedonia Telecom, who had heard of it
from police sources, although Mengel did not know who had been detained and
why. The testimony was
significant because it challenged the German government's insistence that it
learned of Masri's abduction only at the end of May 2004. Germany denies being
complicit in the affair, or failing to take action to protect one of its
nationals. The Masri case was one of
those highlighted this month in a Council of Europe report which said Germany
was one of more than a dozen European countries that colluded in secret
international transfers of terrorist suspects by the United States. Masri's is among the best
known examples of the alleged transfers, known as 'renditions', which human
rights groups say may lead to abuse and torture. Emotional Testimony Masri himself testified
later on Thursday to the inquiry and was questioned in detail about his
account: that he was handed over in Macedonia to the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency, flown to Afghanistan and interrogated in jail for four
months before being returned to Europe and dumped in Albania. He repeated his conviction
that a man named "Sam," who visited him several times toward the
end of his Afghan prison stay, was a German official. "Sam, from his accent,
was definitely German," he said, adding that he had detailed knowledge
about Masri's local mosque in the German town of Neu Ulm. Masri at one point wiped
tears from his eyes and asked for a break in questioning as he recalled how
Sam had told him not to be frightened when he returned to Germany - a
reference to the fact that his wife and children had left the family home,
believing he had abandoned them. They have since been reunited. Opposition lawmakers, who
forced the parliamentary inquiry against government wishes, see Sam's true
identity, which has yet to be established, as a key to uncovering whether
Germany colluded in Masri's abduction. They also want to know if
German security officials were the source of detailed information on Masri,
his contacts and his financial affairs which was used by Macedonian and U.S.
officials in their interrogations. © 2006 Reuters External link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/22/AR2006062200781.html |