WASHINGTON, 17 December 2005 — US officials, citing pending litigation, are remaining mum on a German government report that the United States paid hush money to a German citizen who claims to have been kidnapped and tortured by the CIA.
Khaled Al-Masri’s case is but one controversy confronting the United States as it grapples with reports that the CIA secretly used the airspace of some European nations while transporting suspects.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Thursday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed allegations of clandestine US arrests during her recent trip to Europe, but department officials say she has not discussed individual cases.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, however, that Rice had told her in their meeting in Berlin that Washington made a “mistake” in the Al-Masri case.
“There’s currently pending litigation, not only in the United States but in Germany as well, concerning this topic,” Ereli said, “so there’s little that I can add to what the secretary said.”
Germany’s new interior minister said his predecessor learned of the mistaken arrest of Al-Masri on May 31, 2004, five months after the German citizen of Lebanese descent was taken and less than a week after his release.
Al-Masri’s case is a hot item in Germany, where opposition lawmakers questioned in parliament Wednesday the German government’s actions in the case.
In the parliamentary debate, the interior minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the government of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder learned of the case when then-US Ambassador Daniel Coats visited Schaeuble’s predecessor, Otto Schily.
Coats gave no details of Al-Masri’s treatment, Schaeuble said, but he told Schily that “one had apologized to him and agreed confidentiality and paid him a sum of money.”
On Thursday, Coats was unavailable but said through his secretary that “his involvement in this case was classified, and he suggested you call the CIA for any response.”
A CIA spokesman said the agency would have no comment on the Al-Masri story.
Al-Masri’s lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, said on Germany’s ARD television that his client denied receiving either an apology or money.
Prosecutors in Munich, Germany, are investigating Al-Masri’s story that he was seized in Macedonia on Dec. 31, 2003, and later was manhandled, beaten and flown to an American-run prison in Afghanistan known as the “Salt Pit.”
After a monthlong hunger strike with other prisoners to protest their treatment, Al-Masri says, he was force-fed, then finally released in late May, in Albania.
Al-Masri is suing the former CIA director, George Tenet; 10 unidentified CIA employees; and three private aviation companies that worked with the CIA in transporting Al-Masri to and from Afghanistan.
