BERLIN, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Germany may have given key hints that led to the CIA kidnapping of German extraordinary rendition victim Khaled el-Masri.
Two weeks after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a German intelligence agent wrote of el-Masri that he was a "follower of (al-Qaida head Osama) bin Laden," German news magazine Der Spiegel reports in its latest issue, which hit the newsstands Monday.
The note goes on to say that ahead of Sept. 11, el-Masri had signaled that "one would hear something soon" and said that one "should hurt the Americans as bad as they hurt the Islamic people."
The note later became part of the Sept. 11-file compiled by Germany's intelligence authorities, a document regularly accessed by agents from the FBI and the CIA, Spiegel said.
Officials from Germany's Interior Ministry admitted that the CIA may have learned about the note ahead of el-Masri's kidnapping.
On Dec. 31, 2003, the CIA hauled el-Masri off a bus in Macedonia. Twenty-three days later, he was transferred to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held for five months in a secret prison and repeatedly abused. El-Masri has since spoken of foot chains, hooded guards and repeated beatings aimed at forcing him to admit that he was a terrorist.
The CIA released him when they found out they had the wrong el-Masri, and that he had been mistaken for a terrorist suspect with the same name.
El-Masri's case is part of a German parliamentary inquiry about the German intelligence community's possible wrongdoing in the war on terror. He has also sued the CIA and its former head, George Tenet, in a U.S. court.
