Khaled Al Masri - kidnapped by the CIA

In the last weeks we had an example how the so-called "war against terrorism" really works. A case of kidnapping gave a lesson to the German parliament and public. Khaled Al Masri, a German-Lebanese who lives in Neu-Ulm, has been captured by the CIA in Macedonia at the end of 2003. Seemingly, the "anti-terror-specialists" thought he was a member of Al Kaida named the same. Therefor, they took the father of 5 children to a prison in Afghanistan where they examined and tortured him. After the CIA recognised their mistake and the innocence of Al Masri who had went on hungerstrike for 34 days, they let him free in May 2004. After 5 months in prison, Al Masri was set out in a wood in Albania, threatened by his kidnappers not to talk about the case. Did he also get a big amount of money for keeping his mouth shout? And why he is not allowed to enter the border of the US?

The whole case now threw a black shadow over the leading ministers of both the new and the old German government, since we also know of other activities of the American anti-terror-agents in Europe: illegal transports of seemingly suspicious persons throughout the continent to prisons in Eastern Europe and the Near East, the use of inhuman instruments such as torture for getting information (in the US it is called something like "innovative methods of interrogation").

How much did our politicians, as the former ministers Schily and Fischer and their followers Schäuble and Steinmeier, know about these activities? Even if they only knew about it after Al Masri was back in Germany again, we could not here any word of protest and accusation against these activities of the CIA in the last months. Was silence the price for not disturbing the stressed relations to the big brother on the other side of the Atlantic?

Critic against the US stays very calm and reluctant. Everybody is against torture and lawless territories like Guantanamo. The good thing is that this opinion is even widely accepted in the American parliament now, where senator John McCain was succesful in passing an anti-torture law.