GERMANY: A German government report has revealed that two secret service (BND) agents kept in Baghdad during the Iraq war passed on to the US information on military targets - and not just details of non-military and humanitarian facilities as previously claimed.
The report backs the decision to keep the agents in Baghdad, saying their activities were "always within the bounds of the law" and essential to guaranteeing Germany's obligations to allies like Turkey and Israel.
The 90-page report, published yesterday, cut down from a 270- page classified version, is Berlin's attempt to head off a full parliamentary inquiry into its involvement in the Iraq war. However, the Greens, junior coalition partner at the time of the US-British invasion, yesterday came out in favour of an inquiry.
The Baghdad spy story broke in January and cast a whole new light on the then chancellor Gerhard Schröder's loud refusal to participate in what he called "military misadventures" in Iraq.
Yesterday's report states that BND agents in Baghdad supplied the US with seven sets of co-ordinates, four of which related to military targets. Later, the two agents were awarded medals for service by the US. The report also states that the military information supplied was of no use to the US, and rejects media reports that the BND officials supplied co-ordinates for a US strike on a limousine convoy suspected to be carrying Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad suburb on April 7th, 2003. The Iraqi dictator was not in the convoy and the bombing resulted in 12 civilian deaths.
The report looks at the issue of the evaluation of intelligence information passed from other countries, noting that German authorities cannot touch intelligence gathered using torture.
But as foreign intelligence never mentions the "conditions" of the interrogation, German authorities "could not rule out" that torture was occasionally used. "[ But] mere conjecture about certain questioning procedures in certain countries cannot be the basis for not taking on board concrete clues of terrorist activity," said the report.