Members of the media photograph Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen who says he was kidnapped by the United States and detained, interrogated and beaten at a prison in Afghanistan, as he talks via satellite at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. - REUTERS
BERLIN (AP):
FEW PEOPLE believed Khaled al-Masri when he first went public nearly one year ago with claims he was kidnapped by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives and abused in a filthy prison in Afghanistan.
But his allegations suddenly gained weight this week, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had admitted his abduction was a "mistake"
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit in a U.S. District Court in Virginia on his behalf. He is seeking damages of at least US$75,000.
CENTRE OF CAMPAIGN
He has since been propelled to the centre of a campaign to end the alleged U.S. secret practice that human rights' groups call 'rendition to torture', although Washington implicitly denies it tortures terrorist suspects held anywhere.
A large man with jet-black hair and a deep, quiet voice, al-Masri was born in Kuwait in 1963 to Lebanese parents. His family later moved to Germany and in 1995, al-Masri became a German citizen. He married and settled in the southwestern city of Neu Ulm.
German officials have said although
al-Masri belonged to a cultural centre that has been under observation by authorities for suspected extremist Islamic activity, they have never had evidence linking him to any sort of terrorism.
In a detailed statement to the ACLU, al-Masri said he was abducted on December 31, 2003 and brought to a CIA prison in Afghanistan known as the 'Salt Pit'.
The statement is consistent with what he told German prosecutors in Munich who launched an investigation earlier this year, and various accounts he has given to media.
"On December 31, 2003, I boarded a bus in Ulm, Germany for a holiday in Skopje, Macedonia. When the bus crossed the border ... Macedonian officials confiscated my passport and detained me for several hours," al-Masri said in the statement.
The next three weeks, he said, he was held in a hotel room and repeatedly questioned about his life at home, including his contacts and his mosque.
Al-Masri said that on January 23, 2004, seven or eight Macedonian men entered the room, handcuffed and blindfolded him, placed him in a car and drove him to what he believes was an airfield.
"I was taken from the car, and led to a building where I was severely beaten by people's fists and what felt like a thick stick. Someone sliced the clothes off my body, and when I would not remove my underwear, I was beaten again until someone forcibly removed them from me," he said in the ACLU statement.
BLINDFOLDED, HOODED
Al-Masri said he was then dressed in a diaper and a track suit and put in a belt with chains that attached to his wrists and ankles.
He claims he was blindfolded, hooded and marched onto a plane, where he says he was thrown to the floor and his arms and legs were secured to the sides of the aircraft. He said he was then drugged into a state of near unconsciousness.
When the plane landed, he recalls it feeling warm. "I learned later that I was in Afghanistan," he said.
German prosecutors have said an analysis of strands of al-Masri's hair turned up traces of chemical elements naturally found in Afghan soil.
