German Federal Prosecutor Reviewing CIA Operation?

Claim of CIA Spy Mission in Germany Referred to Federal Prosecutors
Jan 16, 2010, 14:36 GMT
Monsters & Critics

Karlsruhe, Germany - German officials said Saturday they have asked the country's anti-espionage prosecutor to study news media claims that the CIA mounted a secret operation on German soil to kidnap or kill a man suspected of al-Qaeda links. [Comment: One assumes the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has a thing or two to contribute to the conversation.]

The northern city-state of Hamburg began the investigation but has now referred it to the federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe, a Hamburg prosecutions spokesman, Wilhelm Moellers, said.

He said any claim of foreign espionage on German soil was up to the federal prosecutor to deal with.

The federal prosecutor's office could not immediately be reached for comment, but a news magazine, Focus, reported a federal spokesman had confirmed the transfer of the case and said, 'We are checking if there is sustainable suspicion of illicit espionage.'

So far Hamburg officials have not said if they believe the allegations that a German national of Syrian extraction, Mamoun Darkazanli, was shadowed in Hamburg by the US Central Intelligence Agency in early 2005 without German permission.

An account published in the US magazine Vanity Fair in late December said the aim had been to assassinate him because the United States believed he had been a fund-raiser for al-Qaeda, but the agents, who worked for a CIA-backed firm, Blackwater, were withdrawn.

Later accounts in the German news media have suggested the aim was to quietly abduct him, but Washington officials gave up when they realised this would anger Germany. Darkazanli has told German TV he was aware he was being tailed.

Several years ago, the federal prosecutions office said it had concluded that Darkazanli was in liaison from 1993 to 1998 with various al-Qaeda leaders and was a member of the Hamburg 'cell' which provided three hijack pilots for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But it said there was not enough evidence to prosecute him. The attacks on New York and Washington killed nearly 3,000 people. Germany also refused to extradite him to Spain on terrorism charges.

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Comment: So much for the security of U.S. unilat operations in GM.

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