The NYTimes is leading with a
story about Germany's possible role in the rendition of Khaled el-Masri:
For more than a year, the German government has criticized the United States for its role in the abduction of a German man who was taken to an American prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he said he was held and tortured for five months after being mistaken for a terrorism suspect.
...
But on Monday in Neu-Ulm near Munich, the police and prosecutors opened an investigation into whether Germany served as a silent partner of the United States in the abduction of the man, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Arab descent who was arrested Dec. 31, 2003, in Macedonia before being flown to the Kabul prison.
Why might Germany be so afraid of its complicity in this crime?
The American fuhrer may be forcing it to revisit some rather unpleasant history.
In late 2003, Mr. Masri left his family in Ulm for a trip to Macedonia. Macedonian and German officials said he was arrested at a border checkpoint on Dec. 31, 2003, because his name was on an Interpol terror watch list. But they said the name referred to another Khaled el-Masri.
Mr. Masri was then held in a hotel in Macedonia for several weeks, where he was questioned by the C.I.A., according to senior Macedonian and American officials. A senior Macedonian official said the German Embassy was notified about Mr. Masri within days of his capture. "Unofficially, they knew," the official said of the Germans.
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.
...
Mr. Masri said he had pleaded with his captors to let him go. "Call the German Embassy," Mr. Masri said he had repeatedly told them. "I'm a German citizen. Please tell them I am here!"
"They don't want to talk to you," he said one of his captors had replied.
Of course not. Germany is in the incredibly unfortunate position of being the cradle of 9/11...where, according to reports I find credible, the attack was planned and many of the ringleaders recruited. And they feel intense guilt about that, coupled with a determination to not be the weak link in the chain again.
But that's not the only guilt they face.
By late January 2004, Mr. Masri was sent to Afghanistan, where he said he was held and beaten over the next five months.
For Mr. Masri, one of the biggest mysteries was the identity of the interrogator who identified himself as Sam, and who spoke fluent German. He visited three times during Mr. Masri's final month at the Kabul jail.
During the first meeting, Mr. Masri said he had asked the man if he was from Germany, but the man declined to answer. Mr. Masri said he had asked him, "Do the Germans know I'm here?"
"He said he did not want to answer," Mr. Masri said. "I asked him if my wife knew I was there. Sam said she doesn't know. He then said, I shouldn't ask questions, I should only answer them."
...
On Dec. 12, 2005, Mr. Gnjidic, the lawyer for Mr. Masri, received an e-mail message from a German journalist named Frank Kruger, who suggested that Sam might be a German police official. Earlier this month, Mr. Gnjidic said he had obtained a videotape of the police official that convinced Mr. Masri that he was Sam. On Monday, after meeting the man at police headquarters, Mr. Masri said he was 90 percent certain that the police official was Sam.
"The man was very nervous, and he could not look at me into my eyes," Mr. Masri said. "The hair is different, but the voice sounded very similar."
Yes, the hairstyles are different these days. But the force twisting the German gov't into knots at this time remains constant: can Germany, reunified and forever committed to nonagression, engage in such activities, especially when they turn out to be misplaced?
Or will the inevitable charges of a "Neue Gestapo" devastate a national soul so long in healing?