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| Europe |
| German club called for suicide attacks in Iraq |
| 2005-12-29 |
| The German authorities on Wednesday shut down an Islamic center once attended by a man who has accused the Central Intelligence Agency of kidnapping him and sending him to a secret Afghan prison to be abused and interrogated. The state government of Bavaria said Wednesday that it was shutting down the center, the Multi-Kultur-Haus association, in Neu-Ulm, a southern town near Munich, after seizing material urging Muslims to make suicide attacks in Iraq. Khaled al-Masri, a Kuwait-born German citizen, has said he visited the center several times before being abducted by the C.I.A. and spirited to Afghanistan for interrogation. Mr. Masri said he was taken on New Year's Eve 2003 while trying to enter Macedonia and flown to Afghanistan, where he was subjected to "torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" during five months in captivity, a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Virginia states. He was flown to Albania in late May 2004 and put on a plane back to Germany, he has said. Mr. Masri has said his captors told him he was seized in a case of mistaken identity. His lawyer, however, has suggested that Mr. Masri was abducted because of his links to the Islamic association, which provided prayer rooms and other services for local Muslims. "In all interrogations, in Macedonia and Afghanistan, Khaled al-Masri was asked only about the Multi-Kultur-Haus in Ulm, about the people he knew there," the lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, told the Munich newspaper Abendzeitung, last month. Mr. Masri's case has stoked debate in Germany about how to prevent terrorist attacks and guard civil liberties. The federal interior minister, Wolfgang SchÀuble, for instance, is calling for tougher laws so that anyone who has trained in camps in Afghanistan can be prosecuted. Mr. Masri said United States agents questioned him about associates, including his friend Reda Seyam, an Egypt-born German citizen under investigation by German federal prosecutors on suspicion of supporting Al Qaeda. Mr. Masri has denied any connection to terrorism. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |