BERLIN, June 22 (UPI) -- A German prosecutor testified before a parliamentary committee that he was convinced the alleged CIA kidnapping of Khaled el-Masri did occur.
El-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent, claims he was kidnapped in December 2003 by the CIA in Macedonia, and later detained and abused in a prison in Afghanistan for nearly five months.
"The Munich prosecution office has come to the conclusion that Mr. el-Masri's story at the core is accurate to what really happened," Thomas Oppermann, of the government Social Democrats, Thursday told reporters in Berlin. Oppermann sits on the parliamentary inquiry board that Thursday morning questioned Martin Hofmann from the Munich prosecution office.
Hofmann, according to the board members, gave no indication as to German involvement in or tolerance of the kidnapping. Allegations have surfaced that German authorities knew about the kidnapping before el-Masri was released in May, after the CIA found out it mistakenly had the wrong man. So far, Berlin claims it only knew of el-Masri's plight after he returned to Germany.
El-Masri has become the poster boy for critics of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, a practice of flying terrorist suspects to third countries where they are detained and questioned.
Later Thursday, el-Masri is expected to testify on his plight; so is a mysterious new witness, who at the time of the kidnapping was in Macedonia and claims he informed the German embassy in Skopje about the kidnapping of a German citizen.
