CIA 'rendition' detains innocent German

US detained innocent German

Friday 22 April 2005, 16:34 Makka Time, 13:34 GMT

A German citizen was whisked by the Central Intelligence Agency out of Macedonia in 2003 and
imprisoned in Afghanistan for six months even though half way through his detention it became clear
he was innocent, NBC News has said.

Khalid al-Masri was held in secret at an Afghani prison, nicknamed the Salt Pit, for three months
while Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents considered what to do with him until Condoleezza
Rice, who was then national security adviser to President George Bush, ordered him set free.

Al-Masri's case highlights the highly controversial practice of so-called rendition used by US
officials to capture people they suspect of terrorism and jail them in countries where their
treatment is unconstrained by US laws.

NBC News said on Thursday night that Macedonian authorities first detained al-Masri in late December
2002, because his name matched someone who had trained in an al-Qaida camp and he had a fake
passport.

The Macedonians contacted the CIA and al-Masri said he was kidnapped and flown by US officials to
Afghanistan where he was kept in harsh conditions until his release in late May 2004.

Condemnation

The report said CIA officials in Kabul in February suspected al-Masri was the wrong man, and that in
March the CIA determined that his passport was not fake and he was an innocent person.

In April, sources told NBC, then CIA Director George Tenet was briefed of al-Masri's situation and
said he should be released from prison.

However, it took another month and two direct orders, two weeks apart, from Rice before al-Masri was
finally set free in late May.

"It's very deeply troublesome," CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith told NBC News when he was told
al-Masri's story. He said the German should not have been kept in jail when it became clear he was
innocent.

"It's wrong morally, it's wrong legally, and it violates the basic principles of the United States,"
the CIA official added.

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April 22, 2005 2:35 AM

CIA said to have wrongly held German suspect

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA operatives held a German citizen in a prison in Afghanistan for six weeks
even after determining he was not an Osama bin Laden associate and despite an order from then-U.S.
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, NBC News reported on Thursday.

Authorities in Germany have been investigating complaints by Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German
who says he was abducted in Macedonia on New Year's Eve in 2003 and flown to Afghanistan.

Masri said he was beaten and injected with drugs by interrogators, who suspected he had ties to bin
Laden's al Qaeda network. He was released in May 2004 in Albania.

NBC said he had been picked up because his name matched someone trained in bin Laden's camps and his
German passport was thought to be fake.

The network, citing unnamed senior U.S. officials, said CIA officers concluded Masri was the wrong
man after his passport proved legitimate. The network said then-CIA Director George Tenet had been
alerted to the error.

But Masri was held at a CIA-run prison dubbed the Salt Pit for another six weeks "while officials
debated how to handle the mistake," NBC said.

It said the matter reached Rice, now secretary of state and then President George W. Bush's chief
national security adviser. She ordered Masri's immediate release, twice, before he was finally let
go, the report said.

A CIA representative had no comment. The CIA's inspector general is investigating, NBC quoted
intelligence sources as saying.

In January, Munich prosecutor Martin Hofmann told Reuters state prosecutors were investigating
unnamed parties on suspicion of abduction of Masri, then 41.

German officials had verified the details of Masri's journey up to the Macedonian border, where he
was taken off a tourist bus, Hofmann said. He said they were working with overseas counterparts to
establish what happened next.

Reuters

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