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Last Updated: Dec 15, 2007 - 2:55:41 AM |
BERLIN - A German citizen who claimed the CIA kidnapped and tortured him in an Afghan prison has been detained on suspicion of arson and sent to a hospital psychiatric ward, police said Thursday.
Khaled el-Masri, 43, allegedly set fire to the entrance of a wholesale market after breaking its glass door in the southern German town of Neu-Ulm, police said. A judge ordered him admitted to a psychiatric ward, police said.
"We don't know the motive for his offense," police inspector Alfons Wagner told The Associated Press. "But we know that el-Masri was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the hospital."
The damage to the market was estimated at $680,000.
El-Masri's lawyer Manfred Gnjidic said his client had "a complete nervous breakdown."
"Torture victims have to be in therapy," Gnjidic told AP, adding that for three years, he tried unsuccessfully to get el-Masri into a therapy program but nobody supported him.
El-Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, said he was mistakenly identified as an associate of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers and was kidnapped while attempting to enter Macedonia in 2003. He claims he was flown to a CIA-run prison known as the "salt pit" in Kabul where he was beaten and sexually abused with an object during five months in captivity.
In March, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., refused to reinstate a lawsuit by el-Masri, ruling the case could jeopardize national security by disclosing state secrets.
Human rights activists have cited el-Masri's story in calling on the U.S. to stop flying terrorism suspects to countries where they could face abuse and torture — a practice known as extraordinary rendition.
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