U.S. admitted mistake, chancellor says

Condoleezza Rice has been asked many questions about prisoner policies.
WASHINGTON POST
BUCHAREST, Romania -- The Bush administration has admitted it mistakenly abducted a German citizen on suspicion of terrorist links, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Rice, addressing reporters in Berlin with Merkel, declined to comment on the case of Khaled al-Masri, but she said that she pledged to the German leader that "when and if mistakes are made, we work very hard and as quickly as possible to rectify them."
Merkel's statement, relayed by an interpreter, that "the American administration has admitted this man has been erroneously taken" came at a time of intense European scrutiny of the U.S. policy of secretly whisking terrorist suspects away to secret detention centers for extrajudicial interrogations.
In the first full day of a weeklong European tour, questions on this issue dominated Rice's news conference with Merkel, which drew dozens of reporters and 27 television cameras.
Twelve out of 13 questions posed to Rice in an interview with Britain's Sky News service referred to prisoner policies.
Rice faced more questions about CIA practices at a later news conference in Romania.
She was making a three-hour stopover there designed to highlight a landmark agreement with Romania, a former member of the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, to allow 1,500 U.S. troops to use one of its airbases.
Al-Masri situation
The Washington Post reported Sunday that in May 2004 then-U.S. ambassador Daniel R. Coats told the German interior minister about the al-Masri case but requested the German government never disclose what it had been told, even if al-Masri went public.
On Tuesday al-Masri filed a lawsuit at U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., against former CIA Director George Tenet, three private airline companies and unnamed CIA officials, saying that he was abducted in Macedonia and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan.
There, he alleges, he was abused and held against his will even though Tenet and other top officials knew he was mistakenly detained.
Filed by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the complaint asks for damages in excess of $75,000.
At a news conference in Washington, al-Masri spoke via satellite link from Germany and said he wants U.S. officials to explain "why they did this to me and how this came about." He requested an official U.S. government apology.
Al-Masri attempted to enter the United States over the weekend to speak at the news conference but was turned away because his name was on a Homeland Security watch list.
A State Department official said Tuesday the United States has informed the German government that the problem has been resolved and he will be allowed to enter.
Like other State Department officials interviewed Tuesday, this one declined to be identified by name, following State Department policy.
Aides traveling with Rice said she did not concede any errors in the al-Masri case during her meeting with Merkel. They said they were puzzled by Merkel's remarks and suggested she may have been influenced by media reports about the case.