The CIA kidnapping of Khaled al-Masri

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis

Tuesday December 06, 2005 09:34

by Kevin Mannerings

How much did Otto Schilly and Gerhardt Schroeder know about the CIA kidnapping of Khaled al-Masri, the man who was grabbed by mistake?

The story of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen from Ulm, who was kidnapped by the CIA while on holiday in Macedonia in January 2004, has taken a dramatic turn.

The US Government is claiming it informed the German Government about the kidnapping some time ago. Daniel Coats, the US ambassador, is said to have informed Otto Schilly, the German Interior Minister in May 2204. He would have been obliged to inform the Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schroeder.

Masri was injected with drugs and tortured. He was flown to Afghanistan. Five months later, the CIA realised they had got the wrong Khaled al-Masri, he was taken back to Albania, and set out on the street. He made his way home to Ulm and reported his kidnapping.

If Schilly and Schroeder knew about this, and did nothing, then they are party to the crime. The State Prosecuter in Bavaria is investigating.

It is expected that al-Masri will start proceedings against the CIA in a US court today.

It had been thought that the practice of state collusion in kidnapping citizens and torturing them had come to an end here in Germany in 1945.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that Otto Schilly made his reputation in the early 1970's as the lawyer who defended the RAF 'terrorists' Horst Mahler and Gudrun Ennslin. He was present at the post-mortem of Baader, Raspe, and Ennslin, three RAF members who died in Stuttgart-Stammheim in 1977.

Today, Otto Schilly is exercising his right to remain silent about the kidnapping and torture of Khaled al-Masri.