File photo of Mamoun Darkazanli
http://www.presstv.ir/photo/20100105/dastmalchi20100105222338828.jpg
German prosecutors have launched an investigation over a
magazine report claiming CIA agents and employees of a
notorious US private security firm had sought to assassinate
a German-Syrian terror suspect.
Berlin on Monday denied any knowledge of the CIA's
operation, several days after the report's publication in
Vanity Fair just before Christmas.
The controversy centers around claims that the American
intelligence agency and the Blackwater - renamed Xe -
private security firm sent a covert assassination team to
Hamburg in 2004 to spy on and liquidate 51-year-old
businessman Mamoun Darkazanli.
The report also alleges that aside from regular CIA agents,
German authorities and lawmakers had also been kept in the
dark.
Darkazanli is believed to have had contact with several of
the terrorists involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks in
New York since they lived or studied in the northern German
port city.
For five years after the 2001 tragedy, police investigated
Darkazanli's alleged terror links with several of the
terrorists involved in 9/11 attacks. The probe was closed
due to lack of any incriminating evidence.
While CIA's tactics have long been criticized amid
accusations of torturing terror suspects in wake of the 9/11
attacks, Blackwater is perhaps the world's most notorious
private military contractor, haunted by claims of brutality
and aggression.
The company is accused of bribery and the voluntary
manslaughter in Iraq.
While the issue has united the coalition government as well
as the opposition in condemnation of a murder plot against a
German citizen, Hans-Christian Strobele, a prominent German
Green Party politician, criticized Berlin for not
confronting the CIA.
"The fact is that the CIA can, for the most part, do
whatever it wants here in Germany�The secret prisoner
transports after Sept. 11 showed that -- and no one dared to
do anything about it, " he said. "Try to imagine the
opposite happening."
"Imagine if the BND (Germany's federal intelligence agency)
were to carry out a hit job via a front company, say in New
Orleans. It would be a shocking occurrence," said the
parliamentarian.
ZHD/MD
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115430§ionid=351020604
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