GERMANY: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will go on the offensive in Berlin this morning, saying that European governments were informed of controversial CIA flights used to transport terrorism suspects.
According to a weekend report, the US told Germany's former interior minister Otto Schily in May 2004 that US agents had abducted and detained for five months a German citizen they had mistaken for a terrorism suspect.
Dr Rice gave a guarded warning yesterday that sharing intelligence was a "two-way street" and that European governments could "decide how much sensitive information they can make public". She added that the US had "fully respected the sovereignty of other countries that have co-operated" in the procedure known as a "rendition".
"For decades, the United States and other countries have used 'renditions' to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to their home country or to other countries where they can be questioned, held, or brought to justice," said Dr Rice before departing for Berlin yesterday. "Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism."
One "rendition" victim is expected to file a lawsuit against the US government in an American court this week.
Mr Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born man with German citizenship, was taken from a bus on the Serbian-Macedonian border on December 31st, 2003, and held for 23 days in a local motel before he was drugged and flown with a team of black-clad CIA officials wearing masks to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan and allegedly tortured.
When CIA officials realised that they had mistaken Mr Masri for an associate of one of the September 11th hijackers, he was flown back to Europe and deposited on a country road in Albania, five months after his abduction.
Mr Masri's attorney Manfred Gnjidic wrote to the German foreign minister in June 2004 demanding an explanation. Berlin's official version since then says that intelligence officials quizzed their Washington counterparts who said it was a case of mistaken identity. Mr Schily, former German interior minister, promised to get answers on a trip to Washington in February 2005, when he was told that no further abductions would occur.
However, the Washington Post claimed on Sunday that Daniel Coats, former US ambassador to Germany, told Mr Schily of the case in May 2004. Dr Rice said yesterday that intelligence gathered during these rendition operations had helped prevent terrorist attacks and saved lives in Europe, the US and elsewhere. "The United States does not transport, and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture," she said.
The US definition of torture was narrowed significantly in a justice department memo of August 2002 arguing that torture is only torture when it involves "physical pain . . . equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death".
The memo continued that torture might be acceptable if the interrogator acted in accordance with military "necessity".