Germany entangled in terror suspect case

BERLIN, March 10 (UPI) -- The former German government ignored the rendition case of a German-Syrian terror suspect, according to a news report.

The office of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for two years even blocked the Foreign Ministry in its attempt to help Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a German citizen of Syrian descent, who had been arrested in December 2001 in Morocco and was subsequently sent to a secret prison in Damascus, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper said Monday.

The German Embassy in Damascus in the summer of 2002 tried to grant Zammar consulate aid, but after a letter to the Syrian Interior Ministry dated June 22, 2002, those attempts ceased for two years.

The chancellor's office, then headed by current Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was responsible for the dead end, the newspaper said, citing classified documents it had obtained.

As a consequence of the worldwide fight against terrorism, Germany and Syria in 2002 indeed agreed to a stronger security and intelligence cooperation. Germany apparently looked away in the case of Zammar not to endanger that cooperation with Damascus: Observers say Syrian terror suspects have been subjected to torture, and Zammar likely is no exception.

The German Embassy in Syria after two years restarted the attempts for consulate aid after it became clear that Damascus "undermined" the intelligence cooperation, the newspaper said.

Steinmeier on Thursday will have to answer questions linked to that case from a parliamentary inquiry.

The former German government has come under repeated scrutiny over the past years because of its dubious cooperation in the fight against terrorism, thus indirectly backing human-rights violations, critics say.