German Court Challenges C.I.A. Over Abduction

A German court has issued arrest warrants for thirteen people involved in the mistaken kidnapping and jailing of a German citizen of Lebanese descent in the most serious challenge yet to the CIA's practice of extraordinary rendition, where they take suspects to other country's where many of us suspect these individuals may be tortured.

Prosecutors in Munich said the suspects, whom they did not identify, were part of a C.I.A. “abduction team” that seized the man, Khaled el-Masri, in Macedonia in late 2003 and flew him to Afghanistan. He was imprisoned there for five months, during which, he said, he was shackled, beaten and interrogated about alleged ties to Al Qaeda, before being released without charges.

His ordeal is the most extensively documented case of the C.I.A.’s practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are seized and sent for interrogation to other countries, including some in which torture is practiced.

“This is a very consequential step,” August Stern, the prosecutor in Munich, said in a telephone interview. “It is a necessary step before bringing a criminal case against these people.”

The CIA have refused to make any comment on the matter and have refused to say whether or not they were involved in Khaled el-Masri's abduction.

However, the German courts actions are substantial improvement on the behaviour of other European country's who were recently found to be complicit in rendition flights passing through their country's. Here in Britain the government had always claimed to have no knowledge of whether the US were using this country's airports as part of their extraordinary rendition programme. An enquiry found this claim to be false.

Issuing an arrest warrant is a major expansion of the legal challenge to the C.I.A.’s rendition program in Europe. Italian prosecutors are seeking indictments against 25 C.I.A. operatives and Italy’s former intelligence chief for the kidnapping of a militant Egyptian cleric in 2003.

In Germany, unlike Italy, defendants cannot be tried in absentia. As a practical matter it is unlikely that the Bush administration will acquiesce in the extradition to Germany of the 13 suspects. But the arrest warrant could further hinder their ability to move around Europe.

So whilst Bush is unlikely to hand over the suspects to the German courts, there is some small comfort to be taken from the fact that these suspects will be less likely to enter Europe again as their arrest would be almost guaranteed.

Mr Masri has attempted to bring charges against his abductors in US courts with little success.

Mr. Masri is petitioning a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to reinstate a lawsuit against the agency. Last May a federal judge threw out a suit brought by Mr. Masri, accepting the government’s contention that it would be impossible to hold a trial without disclosing state secrets.

The Justice Department have refused to help German prosecutors, forcing them to rely on other sources, including journalists.

A major break, Mr. Stern said, came from a Spanish reporter who compiled a list of the names of people said to have been involved in Mr. Masri’s abduction from sources in the Civil Guard, a Spanish paramilitary police agency. The C.I.A. used the Spanish island of Majorca as a logistics center for its flights, Mr. Gnjidic said, and the authorities found the names of members of the rendition team on hotel logs there.

Meanwhile in Spain "a judge has ordered Spain’s intelligence agency to declassify any documents it has about secret C.I.A. transporting of terrorism suspects, court officials said Wednesday".

The German court action, like the Spanish and Italian ones, are a sign that the Europeans - emboldened by the enquiry that found their government's to be complicit in rendition and simply lying to their respective electorates - are no longer going to find it easy to assist the CIA in this barbaric and ludicrously illegal process.

Merkel has been bending over backwards to try to make amends for Germany's stance on the Iraq war, however German courts are making clear that the law is more important than diplomatic niceties.

This is a welcome change and the beginning of the end of Europe's participation in the extraordinary rendition process.

Nor should we be in any doubt about how brutal and indiscriminate this process has been. You can read Khaled el-Masri's story here. This is simply a taster:

A man is walking alone along a mountain path in the darkness. He is carrying a suitcase. He seems frightened, tired and confused. He has long hair and a long beard, but they are untidy, as if he did not grow them voluntarily. He turns a bend and meets three men carrying Kalashnikovs.

The man shows them his passport. It indicates that he is a German citizen, born in Lebanon, called Khaled el-Masri. Using poor English, he tells them that he does not know where he is. They tell him that he is on the Albanian border, close to Serbia and Macedonia, and that he is there illegally since he doesn't have an Albanian stamp in his passport.

The story that el-Masri tells them by way of explanation, on this evening in late May 2004, is extraordinary: a story of how an unemployed German car salesman from the town of Ulm went on a New Year's holiday to Macedonia, was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled and blindfolded and flown to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but controlled by Americans. Five months after first being seized, he says, still with no explanation or charge, he was flown back to Europe and dumped in an unknown country which turned out to be Albania.

Civilised country's operate legal systems that render treating any suspect in this way deeply illegal and unethical. It is simply astonishing that Europe's leaders for so long facilitated such a process.

Thank God Europe's courts are finally forcing their governments to comply with law as we all understand it. One day books will be written about the practices that the Bush administration indulged in and most Americans will scarce recognise the country that is being described as their own.

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