Germany searches for NC CIA operatives

Munich state prosecutors took the unprecedented step on Jan. 31 of issuing warrants for the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents alleged to have kidnapped and beaten a German national who was abducted and held prisoner in Afghanistan under the extraordinary rendition program. Khaled el Masri, a German of Lebanese descent, was bundled into an unmarked bus while on holiday in Macedonia in December 2003 and flown to a US jail in Afghanistan. He was released in May 2004. Masri says that he was beaten and mistreated by US interrogators, even though it was clear he was innocent. He says that on his release he was "dumped like a piece of luggage" in Albania and told by his abductors that they "wanted to hear nothing more" about him. The US has refused to assist the German authorities over Masri's case. In May last year, a judge dismissed a lawsuit he filed against the CIA, citing national security considerations. Masri is appealing. His attorneys said the recent revelations from Europe show that the secrecy concerns are moot. "It renders even more far-fetched the argument that every single development in this case is a state secret," said Ben Wizner, an ACLU lawyer who is representing Masri in his lawsuit. One of the German warrants was said to have been issued against the pilot of a Boeing aircraft used to fly Masri to Afghanistan; the others were issued against individuals identified only by CIA codenames. Some of the suspects worked as pilots for Aero Contractors, an aviation firm based in Smithfield, NC. Flight data show that Aero Contractors operated the Boeing 737 that carried Masri to Kabul on Jan. 24, 2004. Aero Contractors was named as a defendant in Masri's initial lawsuit. Most of the CIA employees being sought by Germany reportedly live in North Carolina. If the warrants lead to a trial, it would be the first criminal prosecution over the US "rendition" program. But German warrants are not valid in the US. Renditioning is a euphemistic term that US government officials have introduced to describe the practice of flying people the US alleges are terrorists to be questioned in countries where they have no rights under US law and may be subjected to torture. Masri said: "They beat me from all sides, from everywhere, with hands and feet. With knives or scissors they took away my clothes. In silence. The beating, I think, was just to humiliate me, to hurt me, to make me afraid, to make me silent. They stripped me naked. I was terrified. They tried to take off my pants. I tried to stop them so they beat me again. And when I was naked I heard a camera." El-Masri broke down when he recalled the moment when the men carried out an intrusive anal search. Masri said he was kept in a secret CIA prison that was known as the Salt Pit and interrogated about Islamic radicals in Germany before his captors realized they had the wrong man. He said he was flown back to the Balkans five months later, released on a hillside in Albania and warned to keep his mouth shut. If not for the pit stops on a Mediterranean resort island, where they relaxed in four-star hotels and went to the spa for a massage, the CIA operatives would have remained safely in the shadows. German investigators said they received detailed records of the intelligence agents' stopovers on the Spanish island of Palma de Mallorca from Spanish police last year. The documents, which included the operatives' passport numbers, hotel bills and aviation records, enabled prosecutors to identify the CIA abduction crew. US officials have never publicly admitted guilt or responsibility in the Masri case, and the US Justice Department has refused to cooperate with requests for information from German prosecutors. The case is the second in which European prosecutors have filed charges against CIA employees involved in counterterrorism operations. Italian prosecutors have charged 25 CIA operatives and a US Air Force officer with kidnapping a cleric on a Milan street in 2003 and taking him to Cairo, where he says he was tortured. The Italian prosecutors charged the CIA after investigators traced their cellphone logs and frequent-flier records. They also found that the operatives had racked up more than $150,000 in expenses while in Italy, including long stays at $500-a-night hotels. European law enforcement authorities acknowledged that it is highly unlikely that any CIA officers would be apprehended or extradited from the United States. If the suspects were to travel to the European Union, however, they could be arrested.