January 31, 2007
Germany Issues Arrest Warrants for 13 CIA Agents
"...in the alleged kidnapping of German citizen Khaled al-Masri."
The prosecutor's office refused to reveal the names of the people sought. ..."the personal details contained in the arrest warrants are, according to our current knowledge, aliases of CIA agents." He added that, "further investigation will, among other things, concentrate on trying to determine the clear identities of the suspects." Prosecutors did not state the nationalities of the suspects. However, according to German media reports, most of the suspects are resident in the US.
"The arrest warrants are... a symbol that "the CIA in no way operate in a lawless space and that Germany will not tolerate the measures of the agents and their bosses," Manfred Gnjidic (al-Masri's lawyer) said.
The German prosecutors received the names of the suspects from a Spanish journalist who had sources within Spain's Civil Guard police force...They were also assisted by the Milan prosecutor's office and Swiss senator Dick Marty who led a recent inquiry into CIA renditions for the Council of Europe. Italy has also issued arrest warrants for suspected CIA agents in a separate renditions case.
The German television station NDR released a list of the names of the supects which it claimed its reporters had obtained. The names, which were of 11 men and two women, included the suspected pseudonyms Kirk James Bird and Hector Lorenzo. The station claimed it had contacted three of the suspects but they had refused to comment. They managed to trace one of the men, who has the pseudonym Eric Fain, because he had made a phone call home from Mallorca.
Khaled al-Masri claims he was abducted in Macedonia at the end of 2003. After being handed over to the CIA and flown to Afghanistan, he claims to have been tortured and accused of collusion with the Sept. 11 hijackers. He says he was held for four months before being released without any charges on a roadside in Albania.
story | Spiegel
thanks Conscientious
~We don't do that here. Our tv stations would never investigate or expose CIA pseudonyms.
Have any CIA agents ever been arrested? Ever been tried?
From what I understand governments allow foreign agents to operate inside their countries based on reciprocal agreements.
This news item suggests German security agencies have no need, nor forsee the need, to kidnap American citizens and ship them to other countries for torture.
Does the CIA hold grudges or do they outsource their grudges to private companies?
[photo from google: kidnap/ not Speigel]
~Some news-stories require "artist renditions" (sic) like in the days before photo-journalism, don't you think?
Posted by Stubbornson at January 31, 2007 09:51 AM