German spy knew about el-Masri kidnapping

BERLIN, June 1 (UPI) -- A German intelligence agent knew early on about the alleged CIA kidnapping of German Khaled el-Masri, the country's intelligence agency admitted Thursday.

A mid-ranking agent in Macedonia had heard that el-Masri, who became a poster boy for the U.S. extraordinary rendition program, was detained at Skopje airport and later handed over to U.S. authorities, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service BND said Thursday.

The agent gathered the information in the "first half of January" in a government cafeteria in Skopje, but did not pass it on, the BND said, adding the incident was an "information breakdown."

El-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent, would later be transferred to Afghanistan for detainment.

The blunder is yet one more scandal that has shaken the BND, already under fire for dubious interrogation methods in prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Damascus, Syria, and for spying on German journalists.

The BND had always assured it did not know about el-Masri's kidnapping until he returned to Germany, when the CIA let him go after they found out they had the wrong man.

A parliamentary inquiry is currently trying to shed light onto the affair.