By IRNA,
Berlin : German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing mounting pressure from within her own Christian Democratic party (CDU) to launch an inquiry into US reports that CIA used death squads trying to kill an alleged al-Qaeda supporter in Hamburg in 2005.
The CDU’s domestic policy spokesman in parliament, Wolfgang Bosbach, branded the charges as “stunning” and “highly explosive,” calling for an investigation.
Bosbach, who is also the influential chairman of the German parliament’s domestic affairs committee, said, “We will ask the current government what information they have about it.”
He warned that if the allegations proved to be true, it could have a “grave” impact on US-German relations.
The conservative MP’s remarks were underscored by his fellow party member, Christoph Ahlhaus who is interior minister of Hamburg state.
He urged also the Merkel government to probe the charges.
“I expect the federal government to contact the United States government and ask for a complete inquiry into the facts,” said Ahlhaus in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa.
“If there is evidence that US organizations were operationally active in Germany in this way without the knowledge of their German counterparts, we can’t just act as if nothing happened,” he added.
Ahlhaus, who supervises the state police and anti-subversion agency, said he had no such information about such a CIA mission.
The German government claimed also it had no knowledge about the CIA-ordered death squads who attempted to murder the alleged al-Qaeda financier, Mamoun Darkazanali in Hamburg.
Reacting to the US press reports that killer teams of the notorious private security firm, Blackwater were contracted by the CIA to murder Darkazanli, the spokesperson of the chancellery told journalists in Berlin on Wednesday that he was unaware of such an assassination program.
“I am not aware of anything related to this issue,” deputy government spokesman Christoph Steegmans was quoted saying.
He added that any information he had on the allegations came “from media reports.”
Officials with Germany’s Foreign Ministry gave a similar answer.
“We don’t have any knowledge on the case,” a spokesperson said.
The latest report on the alleged CIA murder plot in Germany has become a major embarrassment to Merkel government since this was not the first incident where the US intelligence agency has used German territory to stage terror and kidnapping acts.
The CIA was involved in a major political scandal in 2007 when a Munich court ordered the arrest of the 13 CIA agents on suspicion of kidnapping Khaled al-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent who says he was flown from Macedonia to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned for months and tortured.
Germany eventually abandoned efforts to extradite the 13 suspected CIA operatives from the United States for their alleged role in the kidnapping of al-Masri in 2003.
The al-Masri case focused intense media attention on CIA kidnappings of suspected terrorists for interrogation in third countries.
The practice, branded “extraordinary rendition”, sparked tensions inside Germany, and between Berlin and Washington.
The abduction and interrogation of Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk, also put the CIA and Germany’s links with the organization under tight scrutiny.
Kurnaz was captured in 2001 and held for nearly five years at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
The role of CIA agents in Germany has been thoroughly reported in the German press.
According to a leading German investigative journalist Hans Leyendecker, there are more than 120 CIA operatives still working undercover in Germany and are acting like the country is their own backyard.
They are actively recruiting informants and observing suspects without the knowledge of German authorities, added Hans Leyendecker who is writing for the Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Stationed at US diplomatic missions in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt, CIA agents have also access to the anti-terror center of the German government in Berlin.
Germany has also served as a major logistical base for CIA operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East as well as Eastern Europe.