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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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January 11th,
2007 - Berlin ‘Helped CIA’ with Rendition of German Citizen |
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Berlin ‘Helped CIA’ with
Rendition of German Citizen By Holger Stark Der Spiegel January 11, 2007 Classified documents show
that German authorities provided the CIA with the information it needed to
abduct German citizen Mohammed Haydar Zammar and take him to Syria. Now the
German government is facing some tough questions. The handcuffed prisoner's
appearance before the court in Damascus gave him little reason for hope. The
chief judge listened silently to the prosecution's case against Mohammed
Haydar Zammar, a 46-year-old, Syrian-born German citizen - and a personal
friend of the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers. The court is decked out like
a living room, with a yellow-green carpet on the floor and a chandelier hanging
from the ceiling. But it's rarely a comfortable place. Those facing charges
here are considered public enemies and can hardly expect mercy. The German government is
closely watching the development of the trial. It will have to defend itself
in a parliamentary probe in Berlin against accusations that German security
authorities are partly responsible for the CIA's illegal abduction of Zammar,
who has been sitting in a Syrian prison for the last five years. Evidence for the truth of
the accusations has now surfaced in the form of previously-unpublished
classified documents from the files of the CIA and the FBI. The papers show
that it was detailed information from Germany which put the American pursuers
on Zammar's scent. Without Berlin's help, it would not have been possible to
kidnap Zammar, a supporter of bin Laden. His abduction has become one of the
most spectacular examples of the kidnapping strategy the US administration is
using in its war on terrorism. US and German investigators
already considered Zammar a jihadist at the end of the 1990s. When his
friends, Mohammed Atta and his associates, were identified by the United
States as the leaders of the terrorist cell that struck on Sept. 11, 2001,
Zammar's name moved to the top of the list of suspects. The evidence was
never sufficient for an arrest warrant in Germany, however. But the CIA was intensely
interested in the exiled Syrian, who had become a German citizen in 1982 and
lived in Hamburg. On Oct. 29, 2001, seven weeks after the suicide attacks on
New York and Washington, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA)
received a request signed "JIS Berlin." The acronym JIS is used by
CIA offices abroad. The CIA document explained
Zammar was suspected both of having helped to prepare the 9/11 attacks as
well as planning further attacks. It requested "additional
information" about Zammar's activities and his associates, based on BKA
surveillance of Zammar's communications. In fact the BKA wasn't just
listening in on Zammar's phone calls but had also placed him under personal
surveillance. Showdown in Morocco One piece of information the
BKA had obtained was that Zammar had purchased a ticket for Casablanca at
Hamburg's airport at around noon on Oct. 24, 2001, just five days before the
CIA issued its request. He planned to travel to Morocco in order to divorce
his second wife. He also wanted to visit Mauritania, which he considered to
be a truly Islamic country. Three days later, at 5:25 p.m on Oct. 27, 2001,
the plane took off. The US agents, who had been
given the general facts by their liaison officer at the BKA, were concerned
Zammar might want to go into hiding. And so on Nov. 20, 2001 the BKA received
a second request, this time from the FBI via the US consulate in Frankfurt am
Main. The message stated that JIS Berlin had altered its initial request: The
US investigators now wanted to clear up a "certain confusion"
regarding Zammar's identity and asked especially for "background
information" on his person. JIS Berlin also wanted to know why the BKA
thought Zammar was in Morocco. The US agents were in a hurry, and asked for a
rapid reply. This time, the BKA needed
only six days to reply. The investigators followed a guideline issued by
then-Interior Minister Otto Schily. Schily had requested that everything
possible be done to support the USA in their efforts to investigate the 9/11
attacks. At the time, no one suspected the CIA would use the information to
go on a manhunt, the German investigators say today in justification of their
decision to pass the information on. The BKA replied to the
second request on Nov. 26, 2001. A police commissar sent a detailed biography
of Zammar, in addition to a list of his relatives in Syria and Morocco. He
also provided Zammar's flight information: Zammar would fly with KLM from
Casablanca via Amsterdam back to Germany, departing at 6.45 a.m. on Dec. 8.
The reply from the BKA ends with the words: "According to the
information available to us here, Zammar is currently still in Morocco and
intends to travel back on the flight he has booked." It was the ideal dossier for
preparing a strike. A special Moroccan task force arrested Zammar at the
airport early in the morning on Dec. 8. He was flown to Damascus two weeks
later. The fact that the US
government was well aware this constituted a violation of international law
is demonstrated by a memo from the German embassy in Washington. The CIA had
"assumed that Germany had 'no significant interest' in Zammar," the
embassy's chargé d'affaires wrote after a conversation in the State Department
in mid-June 2002. Neither Germany nor the European Union should "take
action against Morocco because of human rights violations related to the
arrest of Zammar," since Morocco had "definitely acted on the
urgent request of the USA." Zammar, who will have to appear
before the court again on Jan. 21, still knows little about the story behind
his arrest. Once filled with hatred for German society, he has since learned
to appreciate its advantages. "I lived in Germany for
so many years and I'm used to the rule of law," he shouted to his lawyer
from behind bars. "I never thought I would spend five years in prison
without a trial." External link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,459075,00.html |