Rights group asks Germany to arrest CIA deputy director

Rights group asks Germany to arrest CIA deputy director

FILE PHOTO - The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building is pictured in Langley, Virginia, US on August 14, 2008. A civil rights group is asking German authorities to issue an arrest warrant for the recently appointed deputy director of the CIA over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects 15 years ago at a secret US detention centre in Thailand. (Reuters photo)
FILE PHOTO - The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building is pictured in Langley, Virginia, US on August 14, 2008. A civil rights group is asking German authorities to issue an arrest warrant for the recently appointed deputy director of the CIA over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects 15 years ago at a secret US detention centre in Thailand. (Reuters photo)

BERLIN -- A civil rights group is asking German authorities to issue an arrest warrant for the recently appointed deputy director of the CIA over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects 15 years ago.

The non-profit European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights submitted a legal brief to German federal prosecutors Tuesday, alleging that Gina Haspel allowed the waterboarding of prisoners at a secret US detention centre in Thailand. The prosecutor's office confirmed Wednesday the complaint had been received and was being reviewed.

Advocates describe waterboarding as a form of “enhanced interrogation”. Critics say it amounts to torture, because prisoners are made to feel they are drowning.

Ms Haspel was the first female career CIA officer selected to be deputy director in February.

The submission by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights -- seen by The Associated Press -- centres mainly on the case of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen and senior al-Qaeda member who was among scores of Islamic extremists detained worldwide in the wake of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

Drawing on media report and congressional testimony, attorneys for the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights allege that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, while Ms Haspel was in charge of a detention facility in Thailand known as Cat's Eye base or Detention Site Green.

The submission identifies two CIA contractors, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, as the only people authorised to have contact with Zubaydah during that time and claims they were answerable to Ms Haspel.

The American Civil Liberties Union is currently suing Mr Mitchell and Mr Jessen on behalf of three men who say they were tortured using techniques the psychologists designed. A US Senate investigation in 2014 found their interrogation techniques produced no useful intelligence in the so-called war on terror, but some former intelligence officials say the techniques have produced valuable intelligence.

“For the purposes of determining criminal liability, what is most relevant is the fact that as head of the secret prison in Thailand, Gina Haspel followed each day of Abu Zubaydah's torture from Aug 4 to 23, 2002, and she alone had the responsibility to end this torture but failed to do so,'' the submission to German prosecutors states. It also cites the case of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing in 2000, who was waterboarded at Cat's Eye base in November 2002.

Both men are now held at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a separate legal proceeding, Europe's top human rights court ruled in 2014 that Poland had violated the rights of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri by allowing the CIA to secretly imprison them on Polish soil from 2002-2003 and facilitate conditions under which they were tortured.

The ruling by the European Court of Human Rights marked the first time any court has passed judgment on the rendition programme launched by US President George W. Bush after 9/11.

Civil rights groups have tried to prosecute several senior US officials implicated in the torture programme, including former CIA director George Tenet, former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, top CIA legal counsel John Rizzo and Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

Tuesday's submission naming Ms Haspel is the first in Germany against a high-ranking official still in service with the CIA. The agency declined to comment on the German group's legal efforts to have Ms Haspel arrested.

A spokeswoman for Germany's federal prosecutors office said a preliminary investigation into the torture allegations was opened in late 2014, following the partial release of the US Senate report.

“We are grateful for all information that sheds light on the allegations,'' Frauke Koehler told The Associated Press, adding that the latest evidence would be reviewed as a matter of course.

While German prosecutors can investigate serious crimes committed outside the country, there has to be a link of some kind to Germany -- such as the victim or the suspect being in the country -- for them to open a formal criminal probe.

The only case with a clear link to Germany that's been prosecuted so far is that of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, who said he was tortured at a CIA-run prison in Afghanistan.

The group argues in the current suit that the renditions in question are part of the broader US programme with multiple links to Germany.

Munich prosecutors issued arrest warrants in 2007 for 13 CIA agents involved in the operation, but the German government has refused to seek their extradition.

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