blueturk
12-06-2005, 10:38 PM
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-worice1207,0,1943335.story?coll=ny-world-big-pix
CIA erred in taking prisoner
U.S. admits error in imprisonment of terror suspect from Germany in a blunder officials wanted kept secret
THE WASHINGTON POST
December 6, 2005, 9:39 PM EST
BERLIN -- The United States has admitted that the CIA mistakenly imprisoned a German national for five months on suspicion of terrorism, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference yesterday.
The admission, which U.S. officials had tried to keep from becoming public, is apparently the first of its kind. And it could have implications for the CIA's handling of terror suspects, a growing number of whom are reportedly being erroneously abducted from foreign streets and transferred for interrogations.
Condoleezza Rice, starting a European tour in Germany, told Merkel Tuesday that "when and if mistakes are made, we work very hard and as quickly as possible to rectify them." Rice declined to comment on the specifics of the case.
Separately, the person in question, Kuwaiti-born Khaled al-Masri, brought suit against the CIA in a Virginia court yTuesday, alleging torture and prolonged arbitrary detention. He seeks damages of at least $75,000.
Al-Masri, 42 and a married father of five, was arrested in Macedonia in late 2003 while on vacation and then taken to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan, where he was allegedly mistreated and interrogated for suspected ties to al-Qaida. His charge contradicts Rice's public assurance before departing Washington that terror suspects flown abroad for interrogation are not tortured.
Al-Masri could scarcely have ended up with a mightier public advocate than Merkel, whose first meeting with Rice was dominated by questions about U.S. terrorism policies, such as al-Masri's detention and reports of secret CIA prisons.
"The American administration is not denying" it erred with al-Masri, Merkel said.
The Germans became aware of his case in May 2004, when the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to the interior minister, Otto Schily. Ambassador Daniel Coats told Schily the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, al-Masri, for five months and would soon release him, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.
There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if al-Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared legal challenges and exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries.
The al-Masri case, with new details gleaned from interviews with current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials, offers a rare study of how pressure on the CIA to apprehend al-Qaida members after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has led in some detentions based on thin or speculative evidence. The case also shows how complicated it can be to correct errors in a system built and operated in secret.
The CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured about 3,000 people, including several key al-Qaida leaders, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. It is impossible to know, however, how many mistakes have been made. The same bureaucracy that decides to capture and transfer a suspect for interrogation -- a process called "rendition" -- is responsible for policing itself for errors.
The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what it calls "erroneous renditions," according to former and current intelligence officials. One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others say it is fewer. One turned out to be an innocent professor offered up by an al-Qaida member who had been given a bad grade, one official said.
While the CIA admitted to Germany's then-interior minister, Schily, that it erred, it has labored to keep quiet the case specifics. Al-Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al-Qaida unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said.
The CIA declined to comment, as did Coats and a spokesman at the German Embassy in Washington. Schily did not respond to requests for comment.
CIA officials stress that apprehensions and renditions are among the most surefire ways to take potential terrorists out of circulation quickly. In 2000, then-CIA Director George Tenet, whom al-Masri names as the main defendant in his lawsuit, said "renditions have shattered terrorist cells and networks, thwarted terrorist plans, and in some cases even prevented attacks from occurring."
After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to nab terrorists bore down particularly hard on one CIA office, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer who, like others interviewed, spoke only anonymously.
Al-Masri came to the attention of Macedonian authorities on New Year's Eve 2003. Al-Masri, living in Ulm, Germany, said he had gone to Macedonia after a spat with his wife. Police took him off a bus at a border crossing because his name was similar to that of an associate of a Sept. 11 hijacker. He was driven to Skopje, the capital, and eventually flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, he said in a phone interview from Germany.
But by March, al-Masri's passport had been analyzed and found to be genuine. The CIA had imprisoned the wrong man.
A week before al-Masri's release from prison in May 2004, he said he was visited by a German man who called himself Sam. Al-Masri asked if his wife knew where he was. "No," Sam replied, according to al-Masri. Sam said he was going to be freed but would not receive any documents or papers confirming his ordeal. Added Sam, according to al-Masri: The Americans would never admit they had taken him prisoner.
CIA erred in taking prisoner
U.S. admits error in imprisonment of terror suspect from Germany in a blunder officials wanted kept secret
THE WASHINGTON POST
December 6, 2005, 9:39 PM EST
BERLIN -- The United States has admitted that the CIA mistakenly imprisoned a German national for five months on suspicion of terrorism, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference yesterday.
The admission, which U.S. officials had tried to keep from becoming public, is apparently the first of its kind. And it could have implications for the CIA's handling of terror suspects, a growing number of whom are reportedly being erroneously abducted from foreign streets and transferred for interrogations.
Condoleezza Rice, starting a European tour in Germany, told Merkel Tuesday that "when and if mistakes are made, we work very hard and as quickly as possible to rectify them." Rice declined to comment on the specifics of the case.
Separately, the person in question, Kuwaiti-born Khaled al-Masri, brought suit against the CIA in a Virginia court yTuesday, alleging torture and prolonged arbitrary detention. He seeks damages of at least $75,000.
Al-Masri, 42 and a married father of five, was arrested in Macedonia in late 2003 while on vacation and then taken to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan, where he was allegedly mistreated and interrogated for suspected ties to al-Qaida. His charge contradicts Rice's public assurance before departing Washington that terror suspects flown abroad for interrogation are not tortured.
Al-Masri could scarcely have ended up with a mightier public advocate than Merkel, whose first meeting with Rice was dominated by questions about U.S. terrorism policies, such as al-Masri's detention and reports of secret CIA prisons.
"The American administration is not denying" it erred with al-Masri, Merkel said.
The Germans became aware of his case in May 2004, when the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to the interior minister, Otto Schily. Ambassador Daniel Coats told Schily the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, al-Masri, for five months and would soon release him, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.
There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if al-Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared legal challenges and exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries.
The al-Masri case, with new details gleaned from interviews with current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials, offers a rare study of how pressure on the CIA to apprehend al-Qaida members after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has led in some detentions based on thin or speculative evidence. The case also shows how complicated it can be to correct errors in a system built and operated in secret.
The CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured about 3,000 people, including several key al-Qaida leaders, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. It is impossible to know, however, how many mistakes have been made. The same bureaucracy that decides to capture and transfer a suspect for interrogation -- a process called "rendition" -- is responsible for policing itself for errors.
The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what it calls "erroneous renditions," according to former and current intelligence officials. One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others say it is fewer. One turned out to be an innocent professor offered up by an al-Qaida member who had been given a bad grade, one official said.
While the CIA admitted to Germany's then-interior minister, Schily, that it erred, it has labored to keep quiet the case specifics. Al-Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al-Qaida unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said.
The CIA declined to comment, as did Coats and a spokesman at the German Embassy in Washington. Schily did not respond to requests for comment.
CIA officials stress that apprehensions and renditions are among the most surefire ways to take potential terrorists out of circulation quickly. In 2000, then-CIA Director George Tenet, whom al-Masri names as the main defendant in his lawsuit, said "renditions have shattered terrorist cells and networks, thwarted terrorist plans, and in some cases even prevented attacks from occurring."
After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to nab terrorists bore down particularly hard on one CIA office, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer who, like others interviewed, spoke only anonymously.
Al-Masri came to the attention of Macedonian authorities on New Year's Eve 2003. Al-Masri, living in Ulm, Germany, said he had gone to Macedonia after a spat with his wife. Police took him off a bus at a border crossing because his name was similar to that of an associate of a Sept. 11 hijacker. He was driven to Skopje, the capital, and eventually flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, he said in a phone interview from Germany.
But by March, al-Masri's passport had been analyzed and found to be genuine. The CIA had imprisoned the wrong man.
A week before al-Masri's release from prison in May 2004, he said he was visited by a German man who called himself Sam. Al-Masri asked if his wife knew where he was. "No," Sam replied, according to al-Masri. Sam said he was going to be freed but would not receive any documents or papers confirming his ordeal. Added Sam, according to al-Masri: The Americans would never admit they had taken him prisoner.