German editorialists reacted to the fact that Munich prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents in connection with the abduction of Lebanese-born German Khaled el-Masri. The kidnapping is believed to be one of the most notorious US "renditions" of a terror suspect, prosecutors said. Authorities are probing el-Masri's allegations that he was taken by US agents in the Macedonian capital Skopje on New Year's Eve, 2003. He says he was flown to a prison in Afghanistan for interrogation, where he was drugged and tortured, before being released five months later in Albania. [...] According to the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, the warrants were "a terrible blow to the US government. Their methods in the fight on terror were treated as criminal acts, and not just from enemy propaganda, but from an independent court of a friendly country. It could hardly be a worse political slap in the face for George Bush." [...] The agent/actors mistook Khaled el-Masri for a terrorist. Did they apologize? No. Instead, they kept el-Masri for months and then set him free in the woods of Albania. But that is only a part of the scandal. The other is the behavior of German politicians. The facts have long been on the table, but neither the red-green coalition, nor the current government, made a complaint to the US. Luckily, the German justice system was not afraid to be aggressive.
[Article continues at link. A return to the rule of law would be nice.]
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