CIA 'used German base' to hold 9-11 suspect

The CIA used a military base in Germany to interrogate the man accused of masterminding the September 11 terrorist attacks and a fellow al-Qaeda leader, according to testimony from terrorism suspects.

The claims, reported by British lawyers of two detainees at Guantanamo Bay, are the latest twist in the controversy over allegations that the CIA held alleged terrorist operatives in clandestine jails on European soil as part of its so-called "extraordinary renditions" programme.

The two men each said independently that they were told during their own interrogations that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Tawfiq bin Attash had been held and questioned on military bases in Germany.

A third suspect, Shaker Aamer, said he changed aircraft at a base in Germany while being transferred in 2002 by the United States from Afghanistan to Guantanamo naval base in Cuba.

The German government has responded by repeating its insistence that its territory has not been used to hold or transfer terrorist suspects, although if al-Qaeda operatives were imprisoned at US military bases, Berlin may not even have been aware of their presence.

However, German federal prosecutors confirmed yesterday that they were investigating a claim of human rights violations involving a US military prison in Germany. The allegations were first reported to the authorities in Mannheim by a source who claimed to have received the information from a third party. Mannheim is home to the US military's confinement facility for Europe.

According to the German publication Stern, a man said he was told by a private with the US Army's 18th Military Police Brigade that three Arabic speaking men were held in the prison from April until September this year.

US officials have not commented on the latest claims involving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although interrogators often pass on information - sometimes inaccurate - as they try to elicit revelations from the prisoners.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, a British legal charity that represents several Guantanamo detainees, called for a fresh German investigation but said he could not confirm the accuracy of the accounts.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief plotter of the September 11 attacks, and Attash, who planned the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000, were among 14 high-profile prisoners transferred to Guantanamo last month from secret CIA jails overseas. The location of those clandestine prisons has not been revealed by Washington but the US insists that they have all now been closed.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan just before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. German-US political relations were extremely poor at the time because of Berlin's opposition to the war, but it has since been revealed that German intelligence continued to co-operate with its American counterparts.

The prisoners gave the information on the two al-Qaeda leaders to Reprieve lawyers during interviews at Guantanamo and it was made public after the US declassified the contents of the conversations.

The European parliament, and several governments, have investigated reports, which first emerged last year, that the CIA had held suspects at secret prisons in eastern Europe and used other European countries to transfer prisoners. But there has been no confirmation of the claims.

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