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That all-important piece of evidence is pitch black and about 20 centimeters long.
It's a single strand of hair from the head of Khaled el-Masri, 41, and spent most
of its life heavily oiled and slicked back. Now, the hair has become a global
player; current German-American relations largely hinge on it.
El-Masri, namely, is part of one of the most unusual criminal cases in recent
years. The father of four claims he was kidnapped by United States agents one
year ago in Macedonia, carted off to a prison in Afghanistan, and accused of
being an al-Qaida terrorist. The tress from his do may be able to confirm his
story. Scientists at the Bavarian archive for geology in Munich are currently
using a method called isotope analysis, which can search for trace elements
such as sulphur, to roughly determine where in the world el-Masri has been in
recent months. Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University is world famous for the
procedure -- in fact, isotope analysis has helped solve many difficult crimes
in the past.
According to initial results, el-Masri's story is, in fact, true. Fearing far-reaching
global diplomatic consequences, the German government, however, wants to see
the case treated rather discretely. After all, el-Masri's allegations are not
directed at some random rogue state but at the most powerful nation in the world
and a close partner of Germany's. Government officials here are concerned: The
explosive topic shouldn't, under any circumstances, harm trans-Atlantic relations
now that there has been, with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit
to Europe last week, the first noticeable sign of rapprochement between Germany
and the US since the Iraq conflict.
Another key aspect in the big picture is, of course, President George Bush's
visit to Mainz next week. Officials feel that nothing should be allowed to cast
a shadow over that event, either. After all, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's
government just recently sighed in relief when the German federal prosecutor's
office dismissed war crimes charges against US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
for the torture scandal in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Germany doing what it can -- quietly
Still, no state in the world can just look away when a foreign nation kidnaps
and deports one of its citizens and acts as if it were outside or above the
law. Nevertheless, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's response was a
grumbling "no" when asked if the case was on the agenda for his meeting
last week with Rice.
Yet while keeping the case low-profile is considered vital, some steps at resolution
have been made. German Interior Minister Otto Schily, the only German minister
who was a loyal friend to the US even during the Iraq war, headed to Washington
recently to visit with CIA director Porter Goss. One of the points on Schily's
agenda was likely an attempt to explore whether another "el-Masrigate"
can be avoided in the future. Berlin wants assurance that this was a one-time
lapse. At the request of the Justice Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and the
Chancellory, the German intelligence services had done their homework before
Schily's visit. Sure enough, the Americans quietly admitted to kidnapping el-Masri
and vaguely implied how the whole matter had somehow gotten out of hand.
One of the key figures in the deadly Sept. 11 attacks, the Hamburg-based Yemenite
Ramzi Binalshibh, told the CIA of a coincidental meeting he had once had on
a train ride. He was told of a man by the name of "Khalid al-Masri"
who had apparently urged Mohammed Atta's Sept. 11 pilot crew to get training
in Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Binalshibh was also told that this
man "al-Masri" had helped Atta's men establish contact with a senior
al-Qaida member in the city of Duisburg in western Germany's Ruhr region.
It's still not clear who this mystery man really is, even though he popped
up in the official report of the Sept. 11 commission. The CIA and FBI have both
been looking for the alleged contact, but so far, all efforts have been in vain.
The wrong man?
At one point, the authorities thought they had him cornered, in the southern
German town of Neu-Ulm not far from Stuttgart. That's where the Lebanese-born
el-Masri, who's been a German citizen since 1995, lives and where his kids attend
a Christian kindergarten. According to the authorities in Neu-Ulm, el-Masri
is a well-integrated member of the community, although he is known to have close
ties to a multicultural house in town being observed by German authorities as
a known Islamist hotspot. El-Masri allegedly had contact with Reda Seyam, a
suspected al-Qaida member, though authorities never found any concrete evidence
that el-Masri engaged in any sort of terrorist activity.
In Germany, the information on el-Masri isn't even enough for authorities to
launch an investigation. The situation in the United States is completely different,
though: Following Sept. 11, US President George W. Bush has authorized American
agents to act outside of all internationally accepted legal norms in the fight
against terror.
Thus, the first opportunity was to be used to ferret the suspect from Neu-Ulm
off to be interrogated in the secret prisons in Afghanistan. On Dec. 31, 2003,
el-Masri boarded a bus in Munich bound for Macedonia. He was looking, he said
later, to get some time away. A week of vacation in Skopje seemed just the thing.
He and his wife had fought heavily, el-Masri claimed. When he crossed the Serbian-Macedonian
border, patrols pulled him off the bus.
All explanations were in vain as three armed Macedonian men in street clothes
took him to a hotel. After three weeks of interrogations, one of the Macedonians
told el-Masri that "the matter is now no longer in our hands." El-Masri
recalls that seven or eight masked men put some diapers and a dark-blue training
suit on him, before bringing him to an airplane, fastening him up tight with
a seatbelt and then sedating him with an injection.
"Laws don't apply"
In a city that el-Masri believes was Kabul, several masked men with American
accents beat him, he claims. Tied up with handcuffs and foot shackles, a man
of Lebanese descent relayed the cold, hard truth to him: "You are in a
country where the laws don't apply to you."
Following endless interrogations, a hunger strike, and permanent proclamations
of innocence, el-Masri says he was flown to Albania one day and then transported
back to Macedonia in a car. Aboard the plane a man passed on an important news
item to him that helped el-Masri place events in a proper timeframe: Germany
has just elected a new president. It was May 28, 2004.
Maybe the whole case would have never become a heated political issue if the
German investigators hadn't worked so tirelessly and thoroughly. The Munich-based
state prosecutor Martin Hofmann, who at least officially is investigating against
unknown perpetrators, is now fairly convinced that el-Masri isn't lying: "There's
just no indication that he is."
The prosecutor has checked the basic parameters of el-Masri's testimony. The
bus driver, for example, testified that el-Masri really sat in the vehicle that
left Munich on New Year's Eve 2003. El-Masri was on board until they reached
the Macedonian border, but not for the remainder of the trip. In addition, there's
a stamp of entry in el-Masri's passport dated Dec. 31, 2003, as well as an exit
stamp from Jan. 23, 2004 -- the day he was apparently flown to Afghanistan.
Investigators making headway
Working through the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the state prosecutor
sent inquiries to the police authorities of all countries allegedly involved:
To the FBI, of course, but also to the Macedonian, the Albanian and the Afghani
authorities. The FBI said it would cooperate as much as possible, but avoided
any specific response to the inquiry from Germany.
But even without that help, the German investigators have made some progress.
Because el-Masri claimed that he felt a trembler during his imprisonment, they
checked for earthquakes in the Hindukush last year. Sure enough, the seismographs
detected several quakes between Kabul and Kandahar, and that, in turn, corresponds
with the preliminary result from the isotope analysis. It provides important
information indicating that el-Masri was, in fact, in the region at the time.
"That's a key part of the puzzle," say investigators.
State prosecutor Hofmann is, therefore, confident that the real circumstances
behind the story -- which some parties don't want to be made public -- will
be known at last.
"Things are looking pretty good," says Hofmann.
Translated from the German by Patrick Kessler