MOSCOW, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- The judiciary of the United States' closest ally warrants an arrest of U.S. secret agents. Preposterous as that sounds, the Munich prosecutor's office has persuaded the city court to put 12 CIA agents behind bars.
They are alleged to have kidnapped and tortured a German national of Lebanese origin. August Stern, chief Munich prosecutor, found the suspicions substantiated enough to demand an international arrest warrant-and got it.
Stern has a bad problem tracking down his men. He has reason to doubt the agents were acting under their real names. Any cloak-and-dagger man would use an alias when it comes to kidnapping a suspect in Macedonia and taking him to Afghanistan, where he would be kept handcuffed for five months and beaten to name his alleged al-Qaida contacts, of whom he had not the slightest idea. The hapless man was eventually released in Afghanistan after his tormentors saw they had mistaken the law-abiding German citizen for a notorious terrorist of the same name.
That was what befell Khalid al-Masri, a mechanic from Neu-Ulm in Bavaria. He was vacationing in the wrong place, in the nation of Macedonia, at the wrong time, at the end of 2003. That was his only crime.
In search of retribution, he filed lawsuit in Richmond, Virginia, in May 2006. The federal judge dismissed it with a stunning explanation: hearings would inevitably divulge state secrets.
What he was referring to was, in fact, an open secret. The United States government had authorized a Central Intelligence Agency extraordinary rendition program to seize terror suspects with no warrants, and interrogate them in secret jails, for the most part in Asia and Eastern Europe. When cornered, host governments use the common anti-terrorism cause to justify the blatant arrangement -- as Polish and Romanian authorities recently did.
A United Nations ad hoc team, members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and human rights organizations denounced extraordinary renditions. Al-Masri's odyssey would not add anything new to the accusations if not for an official turn the affair took as a German court warranted CIA men's arrest. Italian prosecutors insist on another warrant, concerning 25 agents suspected of kidnapping an Egyptian priest in Italy, in 2003.
The United States government refuses to cooperate with its Western European allies, and the CIA is keeping its trademark silence. August Stern, however, does not think the case is lost, with information amply coming his way.
The investigation made a breakthrough several days ago as Spanish journalists studied a list of hotel guests in Majorca, a known CIA nest, to detect al-Masri kidnappers' names and track them down to their South Carolina residence. The Munich judiciary has little hope to have the Magnificent Dozen detained, let alone deported, but the men may have big problems if they dare come to any country in the European Union.
What is sensational about the controversy are the slaps in the face the United States government got from two sides at once -- from Germany and Italy. That is really unprecedented.
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(Vladimir Simonov is a political commentator for the RIA Novosti news agency. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
