Arrested For Arson
May 17, 2007
Khaled el-Masri, 43, was taken into custody after a fire caused major damage to a wholesale market in the southern German town of Neu-Ulm during the night, a police spokesman said.
A statement by the police said el-Masri was "under urgent suspicions of setting fire" at the entrance of a wholesale market after having destroyed the glass door.
A judge ordered that el-Masri be held in the psychiatric ward of a local hospital pending investigations into the blaze, which caused damage worth 500,000 euros ($675,000).
Masri's lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, said Thursday that his client's
act had been a gesture of despair after a dispute with the store
concerned had got out of hand.
He said Masri had still not received proper psychological counselling for the torture he said he had suffered.
Suspect says he was tortured by CIA
El-Masri claims he was mistakenly identified as an associate of the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers and was kidnapped while attempting to enter Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003. He made headlines when it emerged he was flown to a CIA-run prison known as the "salt pit" in Afghanistan where he was secretly detained for five months and tortured. He was released in late May 2004.
German prosecutors are seeking to bring 13 CIA workers in the US to justice for the abduction. Interpol issued warrants for 10 of the agents, accusing them of abduction and causing serious bodily harm.
Masri's lawyers say he was an innocent victim of the CIA practice of the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorism suspects that has caused intense controversy in several European countries.
He had filed a suit in the United States against his detention but it was rejected by an appeals court on the grounds that events linked to the case were a state secret.
Court says spying was unlawful
This week, Germany's highest court ruled that el-Masri's phone was tapped unlawfully by German authorities.
In Jan, 2006, a Munich district court secretly approved a request by investigators that telephones, faxes and mobile phone calls to and from el-Masri and his lawyer should be monitored in an effort to uncover the identity of his kidnappers. The Munich court justified its approval on the grounds that a phone tap would help authorities gather information on the identities of the 13 people suspected of kidnapping him.
"The likelihood that the complainant would be contacted by those responsible was so minimal from the start that the chances that the measures would be successful were disproportionate to the severity of the tapping," the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe said.