German in CIA case doubts 'mistaken identity'

ULM, Germany - A German held by the United States as a terrorist suspect in Afghanistan says his captors had asked him mainly about radicals in his home town, casting doubt on the US argument that he was mistaken for an al Qaeda suspect of the same name.

Khaled el-Masri is suing the Central Intelligence Agency for wrongful imprisonment and torture in a case which has drawn worldwide attention and prompted fresh criticism of US tactics in the war on terrorism.

US officials have said Masri was originally held because of suspicions he had a false passport, and because he had the same name as a wanted militant.

A man with that name is mentioned in the report of the September 11 Commission in the United States as an early contact of the Hamburg cell which went on to lead the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

But Masri and his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, said that US interrogators in Afghanistan had never even asked him about an alleged meeting on a train between the other Masri and the Hamburg cell members, referred to in the 9/11 report.

The Sept. 11 attacks were "not at all" the main theme of his interrogations during five months of captivity last year in Macedonia and Afghanistan, Masri said.

Instead, his questioners asked him in detail about contacts in his home town Neu Ulm, hundreds of kilometres from Hamburg.

They knew a surprising amount about his friends and contacts, and were particularly interested in his acquaintance with Reda Seyam, an alleged Islamist militant whom German prosecutors have been investigating since 2002 on suspicion of supporting a terrorist organisation.

"Reda Seyam drove a car that was registered to my wife. No else knew that," Masri said. But the interrogators did know it, and "they asked me why I had made the car available to him".

Lawyer Gnjidic added: "They knew an unbelievable amount about his personal life, his surroundings, who he had contact with, who he went shopping with, who he'd lent his car to...

"There was no concrete accusation against him. He was exclusively asked about third persons."

Details of Masri's captivity and interrogation have prompted questions in Germany about the motives for his detention, and how the Americans knew so much about him.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has dismissed as "outrageous" a newspaper report that German security services had tipped off the CIA about Masri, facilitating his kidnapping.

The weekly Der Spiegel said on Sunday the CIA may have acquired its information from its own surveillance operation on Neu Ulm radicals. The CIA has declined comment on Masri's case.

The German government faces mounting pressure to reveal if its own security officials knew of Masri's plight while he was in prison - pressure fanned by Masri's statements that one of his questioners in jail was a native German speaker who called himself "Sam".

Masri said the man was tall, blond, with glasses and goatee beard, spoke with a north German accent, and would not say if he was working for the German government.

Pressed on this point Masri, who has lived in Germany for 20 years, said he was sure the man was German, but "whether he was a German working for the CIA, I don't know".

"Sam" accompanied him on the flight back to Europe when he was freed in May last year. "He said 'we're landing somewhere in Europe, not far from Germany, and there we'll part', and I must stay calm, I could go home, I shouldn't be afraid," Masri said.

He was dumped without explanation in Albania, from where he made his way home.

- REUTERS