Khaled Al-Masri: The Unluckiest Innocent Man in Germany?

German citizen Khaled Al-Masri has become the poster boy for the campaign against America’s use of “extraordinary renditions” in combating Islamic terrorism. A June 23 report from Spiegel Online’s English-language service dubbed Al-Masri the “human face” of the renditions “scandal” following a recent appearance before a German parliamentary committee. The ACLU site features a photo of him with two of his “five young children,” one perched on his lap. His name appears no less than 140 times in the 67 pages of Council of Europe (COE) Rapporteur Dick Marty’s report [pdf] on the renditions program. Indicative of the report’s tendentiousness, Marty proposes the image of a “spider’s web” as the most appropriate graphic depiction for the program. Masri’s story, the Marty report concludes, is “exemplary”: that “of a person who is evidently innocent – or at least against whom not the slightest accusation could ever be made – who has been through a real nightmare in the CIA’s ‘spider’s web’” (§132).

But numerous features of Khaled Al-Masri’s biography make him hardly an appropriate candidate to play the role of poster boy that the opponents of the renditions program have assigned him. The assumption of Masri’s “innocence” is essential to the status of iconic victim that he enjoys. In the present context, this assumption should presumably imply that he has had no connection to Islamic extremism. Revelations that have come out in German-language media suggest, on the contrary, that he has had ample contacts to extremist organizations and milieus. These revelations concern:

(1) Masri’s membership in the organization Al-Tawhid in his native Lebanon in the 1980s.

(2) His frequentation of the so-called “Multi-Cultural House”, an Islamic center in the Bavarian town of Neu-Ulm. The Multi-Cultural House has since been shut down by Bavarian authorities for propagating extremism.

(3) His friendship with Reda Seyam. Seyam, a self-avowed Islamist, is suspected of being an Al-Qaeda operative and of having participated in the planning of the 2002 Bali bombings.

Al-Tawhid Membership

In February, the German government submitted a 273-page report to the Bundestag’s Parliamentary Control Committee (PKG) on intelligence matters. The subject of the report was German intelligence activities in connection with the Iraq War and counter-terrorism operations. Only roughly a third of the report was made public. According to the German weekly Focus (February 24), the full report identified Khaled Al-Masri as having been a “leading member” of the radical Al-Tawhid movement in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Masri is said to have been the commander of a 16-member armed Al-Tawhid combat unit. The Focus article describes Al-Tawhid as “an organization that is ideologically close to the Muslim Brotherhood and dedicated, above all, to fighting the Alawi sect that was regarded as ‘un-Islamic.’” It notes further that “Al-Masri and his group are supposed to have been deployed in the area of Tripoli.”

This was not the first time that Masri’s membership in Al-Tawhid had come to public attention. A month earlier, Masri’s attorney, Manfred Gnjidic, confirmed that Masri had listed his membership in Al-Tawhid on his 1985 application for asylum in Germany. Nonetheless, in his COE report, Dick Marty follows Gnjidic’s lead in dismissing the media reports as part of a “defamatory campaign” against Masri. On Gnjidic’s account, the Lebanese “Al-Tawhid” to which Masri belonged was supposed to have been “deliberately confused” in the German media with the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s “Al-Tawhid w’al Jihad”. Even more surprisingly, Marty accepted on face value Gnjidic’s claim that this “defamatory campaign” had been launched by the Interior Ministry of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The Council of Europe Rapporteur apparently did not see any reason to wonder just why the Interior Ministry of Baden-Württemberg should be interested in “defaming” Masri.

In fact, many of the earliest press reports on Masri’s membership in Al-Tawhid do entertain such a “confusion.” (However, the later Focus report, citing the confidential PKG material, does not.) But this is surely more likely a reflection of the central importance of the Islamic conception of Tawhid in Islamist ideology than of any deliberate will to mislead on the part of Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Ministry or German news organizations. The notion of Tawhid stresses the indivisible unity of God as against the Christian trinity. The term frequently appears in the name of Islamist organizations. (The French-language publishing house run by the Swiss Islamist Hani Ramadan – the brother of Tariq – is, for instance, likewise named Tawhid.) Nonetheless, the Marty report asserts that the Lebanese “Al-Tawhid” was “a nationalist party of the left also including Islamist elements.” Marty again takes over this “finding” from Gnjidic without any evident effort at verification. But precisely in light of the strong Islamic connotation of the term, such an assessment lacks credibility. Moreover, the full name of the Lebanese “Al-Tawhid” that was active in the region of Tripoli in the early 1980s is “Al Tawhid al-Islami” or “Islamic Unification”. This is hardly a likely name for a “nationalist party of the left,” especially in a country roughly half of whose population was Christian at the time. The French-language “Quid 2006” Encyclopedia attributes to Al-Tawhid al-Islami the motto “Lebanon does not exist! Only Islam matters.”

The New York Times has played a prominent role in securing Khaled Al-Masri’s poster boy status. It was indeed the Times that “broke” the Masri “kidnapping” story in January 2005. In light of this fact, it is worth noting that in an article from March 2 of this year, the Times claimed also to have had access to the unexpurgated version of the German government report to the PKG. But the Times made no mention of the revelations concerning Masri’s Al-Tawhid membership. (“Selective Revelations: the NYTimes and the BND Affair” on Transatlantic Intelligencer.) Dick Marty claims also to have had access to the unexpurgated version of the report. (See the Marty COE report, note 92.)

The “Multi-Cultural House” in Neu-Ulm

Khaled Al-Masri lives in the small Bavarian town of Senden an der Iller. An earlier (December 12, 2005) article on the Masri case from der Spiegel’s English-language service describes Senden as being “about as far away from jihad as a typical German prison is from the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.” In fact, Senden is about as close to the most notorious center of jihadist activism in Germany as one can get without actually being there. Senden is located in the administrative district of Neu-Ulm, minutes away from the district capital of the same name. Neu-Ulm’s “twin city” of Ulm lies just across the Danube in Baden-Württemberg. The Islamist scene in Neu-Ulm and Ulm has long been a focus of attention of the police authorities of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Investigators were particularly interested in the activities of the so-called “Multi-Cultural House” (MKH), an Islamic cultural center located in Neu-Ulm. Last December 28, the Bavarian Ministry of Interior ordered the MKH shut down. Among the grounds given for this measure, the Ministry specified that “the MHK advocates the use of violence to realize political and religious goals and it aims to provoke such a use of violence.” It further alluded to “endeavors” promoted by the MKH “outside the territory of the Federal Republic [of Germany].” At least one visitor to the MKH, the German convert to Islam, Thomas Fischer, is known to have enlisted in jihad in Chechnya. Fischer was killed by Russian forces. According to investigations conducted by the Swiss daily the Neue Züricher Zeitung, another MKH regular, Omar Yousif, trained in a jihadist camp in Pakistan. Yousif is the son of the Egyptian-born MHK preacher, Yehia Yousif.

Khaled Al-Masri is also known to have been a frequent visitor to the MKH. This fact is acknowledged, for instance, in the Marty report (§128 and attached note 105). It does not, however, provide Marty cause to question Masri’s credibility or “evident innocence.” On the contrary, it is taken by him instead as grounds to “accuse” German authorities of cooperating with the US, since on Masri’s account his alleged American interrogators knew of his connections to the MKH.

The Marty report does not pause to inquire about the ideological orientation of the MKH. In its December 28 announcement of the MKH closing, the Bavarian Ministry of Interior summarizes its findings as follows:

The textbooks used in the MKH for instructional purposes and the publications distributed by the MKH, the media available in the MKH library for borrowing or purchase by members or visitors, the media seized from MKH functionaries, the public pronouncements of MKH functionaries as well as the Friday prayers at the MKH – all of the foregoing are characterized by a massive, prayer-mill-like incitation against parliamentary democracy, people of other faiths, Jews and the state of Israel. They contain open calls to combating/killing peoples of other faiths and for the destruction of the Jews or, respectively, the state of Israel. Jihad is preached as the individual obligation of every Muslim.

The numerous examples cited by the Ministry in support of this assessment include the following:

The audiocassettes “No to the Jews / The Thousand-Appeals of the Khalidin” and “El Rawabi El Jihadi”, seized on 23 August 2005 in the MKH library, openly call for the killing of Jews. A citation: “Oh, Most Worthy One,…send us bombs to kill the Jews. No to the Jews! No to the Jews!”…. The CD “Iraq”, which was seized in the kitchenette of the MKH on 23 August 2005, contains, for instance, the following: “To triumph does not only mean killing the unbelievers, but also killing oneself in order to strike back at the unbelievers!… Whoever fights against the Christians, the Jews, and their allies is a martyr….”

The Friend: Reda Seyam

A recent (June 21) German-language report on the Masri case in der Spiegel begins as follows:

As Reda Seyam set up his camera in his apartment in Neu-Ulm on May 30, 2004, his friend Khaled Al-Masri sat before him in a still haggard state. His eyes blink from out of dark sockets as if he were dazed. The once round face has shrunk into a small grimace. A wild beard surrounds his mouth. The otherwise slicked-back hair stands up in tufts. (Images top to bottom: Seyam, Al-Masri, Darkazanli)

And der Spiegel provides the pictures to “prove” the point: Masri, presumably as photographed on May 30, 2004 by Reda Seyam, with big hair and bushy beard, and Masri clean-shaven and sporting the long, oiled and tied-back hair with which he has become known to global public opinion as innocent victim of American persecution. The latter image is, however, a recent AP photo. Whether it in fact illustrates the “normal” appearance that Masri had also before his alleged ordeal, we have no way of knowing. The identity of the “friend” and photographer to whose home Khaled Al-Masri apparently rushed upon his release from this ordeal does not give the Spiegel author cause to pause.

Nonetheless, it might have. The Egyptian-born Reda Seyam has been widely reported in the German media to be a suspected Al-Qaeda operative. Among the many media to have published such reports is… der Spiegel. Thus a Spiegel article from March 22, 2004 (“Ihr müsst lernen, mit uns zu leben”) notes that Seyam “is considered to be one of the most important Al-Qaeda agents in Europe.” The same article cites the testimony of Seyam’s estranged German wife, Regina Kreis, according to whom Seyam is supposed to have met with Ramzi Bin al-Shibh somewhere in the Balkans in 1996. Bin al-Shibh was one of the leading members of the “Hamburg Cell” that planned the 9/11 attacks. Kreis has since been given a new identity under a German witness protection program. She has also claimed that Seyam bragged to her of having received a personal visit from Osama Bin Laden during a stay in Saudi Arabia.

Other reports have connected Seyam at least circumstantially to Mamoun Darkazanli. Darkazanli was named as a “key” figure of the European “infrastructure” of Bin Laden in a 2003 indictment prepared by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. According to a March 31, 2004 report in the Chicago Tribune, both Darkazanli and Seyam were employed as managers of Balkan subsidiaries of the Saudian firm Twaik in the late 1990s. Darkazanli, like Seyam, is a naturalized German citizen. Germany has refused a Spanish request to have him extradited.

The Spiegel article notes further that Seyam was active in Bosnia during the Bosnian civil war as a producer of propaganda videos for the “Muslim”/Bosniac cause. “One of these videos,” the article specifies, “stands out and could prove to be fateful for Seyam, because it could show Muslims as perpetrators [of crimes]. On it several Mujahideen are to be seen who cut off the heads of three Serbs…. If Seyam’s participation can be proved, he could be charged in Germany for the crime.” In a 2005 memoir written by one “Doris Glück”, presumed to be a pseudonym for Regina Kreis, this episode is related differently. Only one of the Serb prisoners is decapitated. A second is executed by a firing squad of Mujahideen-wives. And the third is also shot to death, but in a series of single, in themselves non-lethal, shots – “as if one wanted to prolong his suffering.”

A March 20, 2004 article from Spiegel-Online (“Deutscher mitverantwortlich für Bali-Attentat”) identifies Reda Seyam – “according to information available to the Spiegel” – as “one of the principal financers of the Bali terror attack.” The article cites, in particular, the testimony of two arrested suspects who are supposed independently to have claimed: “Reda Seyam was our boss. He financed the attack for Al-Qaeda by way of two Islamic foundations.” Muchyar Yara, a former spokesperson of the Indonesian intelligence agency BIN, is also cited. According to his account, “lists of payments to terrorists” were found by the BIN among Seyam’s possessions. Yara specifies that one of the beneficiaries of Seyam’s largesse was convicted Bali bombing co-conspirator Imam Samudra.

At the time of the Bali bombings in October 2002, Reda Seyam was already in jail in Indonesia. He had been arrested in Jakarta only weeks before on suspicion of connections to local terror groups. Despite the evidence against him, however, in January 2003 an Indonesian court convicted Seyam merely on a minor visa infraction. A January 17, 2003 article on the trial in the Stuttgarter Zeitung cites numerous procedural irregularities, as well as reported bribes. Seyam himself is quoted admitting to the bribes: “In fact I didn’t want to pay anything, but I was talked into it…. I want my money back.” And it seems indeed that the bribes were superfluous. Thus, the article from the Stuttgarter Zeitung continues:

A half hour after the end of the trial, Judge Effendy is sitting in his office. “Money had nothing to do with the judgment.” On the third day of the proceedings, four men from the secret service suddenly appeared in the courtroom. A secret service spokesperson confirms this and finds it normal. Judge Effendy admits that there was external pressure: “It’s true. I received an anonymous letter.” What was in the letter, he does not want to say. With a wave of his hand he ends the discussion.

The article hints that the pressure in question may have originated with German authorities: “the Indonesians did not want properly to investigate and charge [Seyam] or… the Germans made clear to them that they preferred to prosecute their citizen themselves.” In conversation with the Chicago Tribune (March 31, 2004), the former BIN spokesperson, Muchyar Yara, has confirmed that “we decided that his [Seyam’s] case would be better handled by Germany.”

In any event, as reported in the German weekly Die Zeit (December 21, 2005), when Seyam was released from prison in Indonesia in July 2003, a 5-member team from the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BKA) was there to greet him and whisk him away to Germany. But far from securing custody of Seyam for prosecution, the purpose of the operation was to “save” [bewahren] him “from being kidnapped by American secret service agents.” “The Americans do not care whether someone is German or sovereign rights are violated,” Die Zeit quotes an unidentified German security “insider” as saying: “They are like unchained dogs.” Then director of the German Chancellor’s Office and current German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is supposed to have been apprised of the operation. Reda Seyam has yet to have any charges brought against him in German courts.

As all the German media who have reported on his case, including Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, concur, Seyam has not made a secret of his Jihadist convictions. In a 2003 interview, he told the German daily the Frankfurter Rundshau: “According to the Quran, it is okay to be a terrorist. According to the Quran, it is an obligation to kill kafir [unbelievers].” The German television magazine Report Mainz quotes him as saying shortly after the March 2004 Madrid bombings: “We are in a war. What do you expect from war? Kind Words? Thanks. Good-bye.” (Report Mainz, September 13, 2004.)

In his COE report, Dick Marty likewise notes Masri’s “friendship” with Reda Seyam. Based on the information of an unnamed “German source” (note 105), he even briefly and admiringly narrates the story of Seyam’s “rescue” from American agents. Marty’s brief account contains numerous inaccuracies. These include, for instance, the erroneous attribution to Seyam of “Indonesian origins” and the claim that he was only “shortly” under investigation by German authorities. As with Masri’s frequentation of the MKH, however, Marty finds this “friendship” notable only as grounds to “accuse” German officials of possible cooperation with American intelligence. For Marty, the point of interest in Masri’s connection to Seyam is not the person of Seyam, but rather that Masri’s American interrogators are supposed to have known about it.

Before leaving the subject of Reda Seyam, it is worth noting that the New York Times, as a search of its archives shows, has never mentioned Seyam in any of its coverage of the Masri affair. This is curious, since the Times itself ran a “profile” of Seyam, based on the revelations of his ex-wife, barely a month before its report that “broke” the Masri “kidnapping” story in January 2005. (The Times article on Seyam appeared on November 27, 2004.) Moreover, the same German-speaking stringer, Souad Mekhennet, contributed to both articles. The Times, presumably in the person of Souad Mekhennet, spoke to Seyam for its “profile.” Could Reda Seyam have provided the tip that allowed the Times to “break” the Masri story?

Via its English website, Der Spiegel has become in its own right an influential source of German news for the English-speaking public. Der Spiegel’s English site has, however, displayed a curious reticence with respect to the evidence suggesting Masri’s ties to extremist milieus. When, moreover, it has mentioned such evidence, it has as a rule spun it vigorously, à la Dick Marty, into additional grounds for accusing the US of wrong-doing. A remark from one of Der Spiegel’s earliest (February 14, 2005) English-language offerings on the Masri case captures the tone:

In Germany, the information on el-Masri isn’t even enough for authorities to launch an investigation. The situation in the United States is completely different, though: Following Sept. 11, US President George W. Bush has authorized American agents to act outside of all internationally accepted legal norms in the fight against terror.

The former assertion, regarding conditions obtaining in Germany, may well be true. For the American audience, however, it may not be quite so reassuring as its authors evidently intended it to be. In early 2000, after all, it would also have been true for the four Hamburg residents Ramsi Bin al-Shibh, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah. This would not, however, prevent Atta and Shehhi from crashing jets into, respectively, the north and south towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Nor would it prevent Jarrah from seizing control of United Flight 93 and dumping it into a field in rural Pennsylvania. Their co-conspirator Bin al-Shibh, as is well known, was captured in Pakistan in September 2002 and turned over to US authorities. One has reason to wonder if the US would ever have been able to gain custody of him had he remained in Germany.

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John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic relations. His work has appeared in English, French and German in such publications as Policy Review, The Opinion Journal, Les Temps Modernes and Merkur. He maintains the Transatlantic Intelligencer website.