KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- A government report cleared the German secret service of charges that it helped the U.S. military during the Iraq war, but opposition leaders counter a giant cover-up is in effect.
Media reports had claimed that two agents of the German Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, had helped U.S. forces to locate targets in Baghdad, despite Germany's fierce opposition to the war.
The 300-page report was provided to a parliamentary panel, which meets behind closed doors. Government members of the panel said the report cleared the spies of the allegations. The opposition said the opposite was true.
The report is provided entirely by the government; most of its contents stay classified and the opposition is not able to talk about the findings or hear witnesses. This explains why the opposition, mainly the Left Party and the Greens, feel betrayed.
One lawmaker from the Left Party stormed out of the meeting, arguing he felt the government was knowingly misleading the panel.
Green Party lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele, also a panel member, said he knew that BND agents had forwarded four reports on 11 potential targets to U.S. intelligence in Iraq.
German involvement in the war in Iraq would be disastrous for the Social Democrats and the reputation of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who had portrayed himself as a fierce anti-war campaigner.
The report also deals with the kidnapping of German national Khaled el-Masri and interrogations of inmates in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in a secret prison in Damascus, Syria. The report and the government said Berlin had no hand in kidnapping or interrogating Masri.
Masri's case has come to symbolize the CIA practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which terror suspects are allegedly kidnapped and sent to third countries where torture is commonly used. The 42-year-old German of Arab descent was kidnapped in 2003 in Macedonia, flown to Afghanistan, where he was questioned, drugged and tortured, before the CIA released him because they found out they had the wrong man.
Germany has harshly criticized the United States for the kidnapping, arguing that it did not know of the case until after his release.
And just as the German government wanted to close the Masri affair, the New York Times pushed it wide open with a Tuesday article claiming that Germany knew of Masri's abduction and even silently cooperated.
The NYT reported that "not long after (his) capture," Macedonian officials notified the German Embassy in Skopje. Berlin has denied doing so.
But there are allegations that go much deeper: Masri has identified a high-ranking agent of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, or BKA, who interrogated him three times in Afghanistan, Masri claims. The agent identified himself as "Sam," and spoke fluent German, he said. Prosecutors in Munich have started investigating the official.
According to information published in Thursday's Die Zeit weekly, the man in question is a senior German terror investigator who has most recently aided U.N. Special Interrogator Detlev Mehlis with his probe into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He also investigated the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco that killed a Turkish woman and two U.S. soldiers, injuring some 230 people.
Masri picked the man out of a group of ten, and later confronted him. With "over-nervous movements," Masri's lawyer Manfred Gnjidic told United Press International via email, the man avoided a similar interrogation situation and "was not able to look him into the eyes."
Masri initially said he was 100 percent sure and afterwards admitted he was only 90 percent sure that the man was indeed "Sam". The accused has so far denied he has been to Afghanistan. The BKA did not want to comment, Die Zeit said.
The affair has already shaken Germany's intelligence community to the bones. If it were true that Germany had sent an interrogator to grill Masri, Berlin would lose any moral clout when criticizing the United States over Guantanamo and other questionable practices in the war on terror.
Only an open parliamentary inquiry commission, where witnesses talk under oath, is likely to shed light onto the shadowy affair.
Such a commission needs to be voted upon by at least one-third of lawmakers -- virtually the entire opposition. A first attempt last month was blocked by the Greens, who backed off arguing they wanted to give the government a chance to explain itself. The move was apparently one of self-defense, as the Greens were the Social Democrats' junior partner in the former government.
The Left Party, and now even the Greens, spearheaded by Stroebele, want the commission. The Free Democrats, or FDP, the third opposition party, is the only group still playing hard to get. The FDP said it would come to a decision by March 7 at the latest.
