Strasbourg, 14/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - Khaled El Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, who states CIA agents kidnapped him and held him for five months at a secret prison in Afghanistan, said on Monday that a German was involved in his detention. “I don't know if the German authorities were aware [of my case] but a German with no foreign accent at all travelled to Afghanistan and interrogated me several times”, Khaled El-Masri said, recounting his tale to the 46 members of the committee inquiring into possible illegal CIA activity in Europe. Mr El-Masri's lawyer, Manfred Gnjidicu, explained that his client had been kidnapped in December 2003 in Macedonia and detained in a hotel in Skopje “by at least nine Macedonians” for 23 days where he was “degraded, photographed naked and beaten from all sides”. He was later transported “blindfolded and hooded” to a secret prison in Afghanistan where he was held until 27 May 2004. Answering a Spanish MEP, Ignasi Guardans Cambo (ALDE), Mr Gnjidic confirmed that the aircraft used was at Majorca airport three hours earlier (see EUROPE 9068 on the use of Majorca as a CIA rear base). In Afghanistan, Mr El-Masri said, he had been tortured and interrogated by several individuals who spoke Arabic with a “Palestinian accent”. According to Mr El-Masri, a German called “Sam” and an American psychologist also interrogated him before he was finally released in an airport in Albania. “I don't know if Sam worked for the German authorities or for the US authorities but he was undoubtedly German”, Mr El-Masri said, answering a question from the rapporteur of the temporary committee, Claudio FAva (PES, Italy). Months later, someone claiming to be a German journalist helped Mr El-Masri identify Sam through a photo as Gerhard Lehmann, but the journalist then vanished and has never showed up again. To this day, Mr El-Masri has taken court action against the American intelligence agency for having imprisoned him by mistake and tortured him. In response to a question put by Kathalijne Buitenweg (Greens/EFA, Netherlands) on the matter of how the temporary inquiry committee could help to clarify Khaled El-Masri's case, Mr Gnjidic said: “What we really need … is a clear questioning of Macedonia's role. (…) It remains an unresolved question why the Macedonia authorities did not contact the German ones after the incident”. Macedonia is one of the countries that did not reply in full to the Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis in the context of his inquiry on secret detention and extraordinary rendition (EUROPE 9142).