A German man who says he was kidnapped by US agents and held for months in an Afghan prison is close to filing a civil suit in a US court to claim compensation, his lawyer said yesterday.
Lebanese-born Khaled el-Masri says he was the innocent victim of a "rendition" - a practice used by the United States to transfer suspected militants in secret from one country to another for interrogation.
The Bush administration acknowledges using renditions as a tool in the "war on terrorism" but denies charges by human rights groups that they amount to outsourcing torture. It refuses to comment on Mr Masri's case.
Mr Masri's lawyer Manfred Gnjidic told Reuters he was preparing to fly to the United States to file a suit, but he declined to name a date or say who the defendants would be.
"We have a great deal of information... We have some points of attack that we want to pursue," Mr Gnjidic said. "In the first place we want a reaction from America, we want an apology from America and of course we also want compensation."
Mr Masri says he was arrested in Macedonia on December 31, 2003 and flown by US agents to an Afghan jail. Five months later he was flown back to Europe and dumped without explanation in Albania, from where he made his way home.
NBC News reported in April that he was snatched because he had the same name as an al Qaeda suspect. It said that even when investigators realised the error, he was held for six more weeks in an Afghan jail, dubbed the Salt Pit, before being freed.
A German state prosecutor is investigating the case as a kidnapping by "persons unknown", and has requested information from the United States, Macedonia and Albania.
Debate over renditions was rekindled by a Washington Post report last week which said the CIA had been hiding and interrogating senior al Qaeda figures at a Soviet-era compound in eastern Europe.
Mr Gnjidic said Mr Masri had not been held in prison after being arrested in Macedonia.
"He was held in an extremely luxurious hotel, 100 metres from the US embassy in (the capital) Skopje, and he was asked what he wanted to eat and so on," he said.
"But I can imagine of course that they're far less careful with people who aren't German citizens and who perhaps are not altogether without a stain on their character," he said.
Mr Gnjidic, who so far is pursuing the case at his own expense, said Mr Masri was fighting not just for money but to draw attention to US tactics in the war on terrorism.
"Khaled el-Masri is a symbol for the illegal tactics of secret services who very confidently place themselves outside legal boundaries," he said.
He said his client was still traumatised by his experience, nearly two years later, and had not been able to find work.