Last week the New York Times broke the harrowing story of Khaled al-Masri , a German citizen from Ulm, who claims he was abducted on a visit to Skopja in late 2003, and was flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was allegedly tortured by individuals who were speaking English with American accents. He eventually made his way back to Germany five months later. The article and the case went almost unnoticed in the German press for several days, as noted by Soj in Romania. Now the story is finally getting some coverage in Germany; Sueddeutsche Zeitung has a comprehensive article on the sequence of events. In the UK the Guardian was initially skeptical, but became convinced about the veracity of al-Masri’s story after an intensive four-hour interview:
On Tuesday the Guardian
was the first European news organisation to interview el-Masri, at the
Ulm offices of his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. In a conversation lasting
more than four hours, el-Masri conveyed a powerful impression of
sincerity: if his story is not true, he must be an actor of genius. He
broke down in sobs as he described the moment he was abducted by masked
men and put on a plane, excused himself to vomit as he recalled the
filthy water he was given to drink in jail, and brightened as he
described the hours before his return to Germany. Often he would pick
up a pen and sketch the layout of a room or building.
As the Guardian and the Sueddeutsche both point out, the case is consistent with the behavior of the US gonvernment’s post 9/11 in the treatment of individuals with suspected ties to terrorist organizations.
If true, the abduction
would add to our understanding of a pattern of US behaviour frightening
in its implications both for America and for the rest of the world. The
former director of the CIA, George Tenet, told the US 9/11 Commission
last year that even before September 11 the US had abducted more than
70 foreigners it considered terrorists – a process Washington has
declared legal under the label "extraordinary rendition".An
investigation by the Washington Post last year suggested that the US
held 9,000 people overseas in an archipelago of known prisons (such as
Abu Ghraib in Iraq) and unknown ones run by the Pentagon, the CIA or
other organisations. But this figure does not include others "rendered"
to third-party governments who then act as subcontractors for
Washington, enabling the US to effectively torture detainees while
technically denying that it carries out torture.
Already the case is having a chilling effect on US – German relations, just a month before President Bush’s planned visit. Der Spiegel reports on the fallout:
Der Fraktionsvize der Union, Wolfgang Bosbach,
verlangt eine Stellungnahme von der Bundesregierung. In Erklärungsnot geraten die
US-Behörden auch durch ein offizielles Ermittlungsverfahren. Der Münchner Staatsanwalt
Martin Hofmann, der den Vorwürfen Masris nachgeht, will in Washington mit
einem offiziellen Rechtshilfeersuchen auf Auskunft drängen. Der Anwalt Masris, Manfred
Gnjidic, erwägt zudem eine Zivilklage in den USA.
