BERLIN, March 7 (UPI) -- Germany's top security chief praised intelligence cooperation with the United States after a German court issued arrest warrants for U.S. agents.
"Germany would be much worse off without a close cooperation with the intelligence agencies of the United States," German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble Tuesday evening told the foreign press corps in Berlin. "The partnership is in both our nations' interest."
His remarks come after German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that U.S.-German ties have been strained by the decision of a Munich prosecution office to issue arrest warrants against 13 Central Intelligence Agency officers. The agents are accused of having orchestrated the kidnapping of German-Lebanese Khaled el-Masri, the first prominent extraordinary rendition victim.
Masri, on Dec. 31, 2003, was hauled off a bus while in the Macedonian capital of Skopje. Twenty-three days later, the CIA transferred him to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held for five months in a secret prison and repeatedly abused. The CIA released him when they found Masri was not the terrorist suspect they were looking for; he simply had a similar name.
Although U.S. diplomats have reportedly approached Berlin with an official demarche, the German Justice Ministry, which has monitored the case, has forwarded the arrest warrants of ten of the 13 CIA agents to Interpol. They are now wanted in 186 countries, including the United States, for extradition to Germany, making their further CIA service virtually impossible.
Schaeuble said he is sure that the German-American cooperation intelligence won't suffer as the Americans knew "very well that ... the German government can't interfere with legal proceedings."
