On December 6, 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice that the United States had accepted that it had made an "error" in Mr. El-Masri's case. On January 31, 2007, the German Prosecutor filed indictments against thirteen CIA agents for their alleged involvement in the rendition.
At about this time, other ominous signs began to appear to suggest that the US was working at the highest levels of the German Government to ensure that the prosecutions against the 13 CIA agents never went forward.
And, at the same time, news items began to appear in the local German press regarding El-Masri's alleged criminal activities. CIA sources and others close to the prosecution, who requested that their names not be published, are said to have instigated a smear campaign against El-Masri. One of the consistent accusations was an El-Masri was a Muslim fundamentalist and a senior member of a terrorist group.
"That's bogus," says Scott Horton, counter-terrorism expert who writes for Harper's Magazine. He explains, "Though the "good El-Masri' has been involved in petty crime and has been diagnosed by court-appointed shrinks as having sociopath tendencies, the shrinks also believe that much of this psychopathology is attributable to his being held in abusive confinement by the CIA. This has been reported in the German press."
And, given his ordeal, how could it not be so?
El-Masri was convicted of arson against a warehouse in his hometown and sentenced to two years probation because he had no criminal record. Later he was charged with a rage-filled physical assault that injured Mayor Gerald Nuremberg, the mayor of New-Ulm, Germany. The court found that while El-Masri's rage could not be solely attributed to his CIA ordeal, that adventure did have a profound impact on his behavior.
Before his Macedonian adventure, El-Masri sold used cars and also worked as a green grocer. Now he was in prison, unable to live a normal life. His family had left him. El-Masri was coming unglued; he was falling apart at the seams.
Moreover, a set of WikiLeaks disclosures of confidential documents has caused an uproar in Europe by showing that U.S. officials pressured Germany and Spain to derail criminal investigations of Americans.
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