By IRNA,
Berlin : German federal prosecutors have taken up the CIA death squad case following US press reports that the American secret service tried to kill an alleged Hamburg-based al-Qaeda supporter in 2005, the weekly news magazine Focus reported Saturday.
Prosecutors in the northern state of Hamburg who opened the probe, have transferred the dossier to the federal prosecutors’ anti-espionage division in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, a federal spokesperson confirmed to Focus.
“We are checking if there is sustainable suspicion of illicit espionage,” the official said.
Prosecutors in Hamburg had initially conducted the investigation to see whether such a criminal act had been planned.
The US magazine Vanity Fair reported earlier that CIA-ordered killer commandos attempted to murder alleged al-Qaeda financier, Mamoun Darkazanali in Hamburg five years ago.
Death squads of the notorious private US security firm, Blackwater were contracted by the CIA to murder Darkazanli who told German television he was aware that he was being tailed.
According to German media reports, the CIA plot was to secretly kidnap Darkazanli,
but US officials abandoned the plan when they realized this would anger German authorities.
The German government has claimed it had no knowledge about the alleged CIA ploy
on its territory which has become a major embarrassment to the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel as this was not the first incident where the US intelligence agency has used German territory to stage terror and kidnapping acts.