GERMANY: Chancellor Angela Merkel was correct to say the US government has accepted as a "mistake" the kidnap and holding of a German citizen for five months, a Berlin spokesman insisted yesterday.
During a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to answer questions on the case of Khaled el-Masri, allegedly abducted and brought by US agents to Afghanistan where he was interrogated and tortured. Dr Merkel said the case "was accepted as a mistake by the American government".
The German leader's remark - during her first meeting to rebuild transatlantic relations - has annoyed the State Department, with one unnamed official telling Reuters: "We are not quite sure what was in [ Merkel's] head."
Yesterday German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said: "The remarks, as they were made yesterday, are valid." Despite repeated requests for clarification, Mr Wilhelm said he had "no reason to comment further on the remarks" of Dr Merkel and Dr Rice, which "were very close to each other".
Mr el-Masri, a 42-year-old German citizen of Lebanese descent, filed suit in a US court on Tuesday against former CIA head George Tenet and others. In the suit he says he was removed from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border on December 31st, 2003, and interrogated for 23 days in a nearby city. He was then blindfolded, drugged and flown to a prison, in a process known as "extraordinary rendition", where he was subjected to inhumane conditions and torture, according to the lawsuit.
Mr el-Masri is represented by the New York-based civil rights organisation, the American Civil Liberties Union. The group's officials say Mr el-Masri remained captive for two months after CIA officers realised they had mistaken him for another man. He was released in May 2004.
Mr el-Masri travelled to the US on Saturday to attend a press conference about his case but was refused entry by immigration officials and sent back to Germany.
"We now know that the highest official in the German government is stating clearly and on the record that a mistake was made," said Steven Watt of the civil liberties union. "Angela Merkel understands the German public and the outcry at the treatment of a German citizen at the hands of the Americans is something that is not going to go away overnight. She has to stand by what she said and not cow-tow to the Americans."
The el-Masri case continues to make headlines in Germany since members of the Schröder government were forced to admit that US officials told them about the case long before it became public.
But former interior minister Otto Schily said in today's issue of Die Zeit that he had "no information . . . at a point in time where I could have intervened to prevent a German citizen coming to harm". A US State Department spokesman declined to comment on the case yesterday.