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No time for comments yet...just wanted to get this up. There apparently was a diary on the arrests last night, but now warrants have been issued.
German Court Seeks Arrest of 13 C.I.A. Agents
New York Times
Mark Landler
1/31/07, 1:57pm
FRANKFURT, Jan. 31 — In the most serious legal challenge yet to the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret transfers of terrorism suspects, a German court has issued an arrest warrant for 13 people in connection with the mistaken kidnapping and jailing of a German citizen of Lebanese descent.
Prosecutors in Munich said the suspects, whom they did not name, were part of a C.I.A. "abduction team" that seized the man, Khaled el-Masri, in Macedonia in late 2003 and flew him to Afghanistan. He was imprisoned there for five months, and has said he was shackled, beaten, and interrogated about his alleged ties to Al Qaeda, before being released without charges.
His ordeal is the most documented case of the C.I.A.’s practice of "extraordinary rendition," in which suspected terrorists are seized and sent for interrogation to countries where torture is practiced.
The issuing of an arrest warrant represents a major expansion of the legal assault on the C.I.A.’s rendition program in Europe. Italian prosecutors are seeking indictments against 25 C.I.A. operatives, as well as Italy’s former intelligence chief, for the kidnapping of a militant Egyptian cleric in 2003.
But the German case carries more weight, according to legal experts, because of the reputation of the courts here for painstaking deliberation, as well as the strong diplomatic ties between Germany and the United States.
It comes at a delicate time for both countries. The Bush administration has faced a drumbeat of criticism over its anti-terrorism policies since the Sept. 11 attacks, while the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been eager to heal rifts in the trans-Atlantic alliance over the Iraq war.