Khalid al-Masri

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For information on Khalid El-Masri, the German National who was abducted by the American CIA and sent to Afghanistan for interrogation, see Khalid El-Masri.

Khalid al-Masri is the name of a person alleged to have approached two 9/11 hijackers on a train in Germany and suggested that they contact an alleged al Qaeda operative in Duisburg.

The 9/11 Commission Report stated:

The available evidence indicates that in 1999, Atta, Binalshibh, Shehhi, and Jarrah decided to fight in Chechnya against the Russians. According to Binalshibh, a chance meeting on a train in Germany caused the group to travel to Afghanistan instead. An individual named Khalid al Masri approached Binalshibh and Shehhi (because they were Arabs with beards, Binalshibh thinks) and struck up a conversation about jihad in Chechnya. When they later called Masri and expressed interest in going to Chechnya, he told them to contact Abu Musab in Duisburg, Germany. Abu Musab turned out to be Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a significant al Qaeda operative who, even then, was well known to U.S. and German intelligence, though neither government apparently knew he was operating in Germany in late 1999. When telephoned by Binalshibh and Shehhi, Slahi reportedly invited these promising recruits to come see him in Duisburg.⁸⁹

However, in response to Slahi's habeas petition, the U.S. District Court found only that Slahi "provided lodging for three men for one night at his home in Germany [in November 1999], that one of them was Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and that there was discussion of jihad and Afghanistan." (p. 19)

An innocent German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, whose name resembled Khalid al-Masri's, spent almost five months in a covert CIA interrogation center in Afghanistan in the early months of 2004, where he was forcibly interrogated and allegedly tortured several times. Participating in some of these interrogation sessions was an officer of the German foreign intelligence service using the pseudonym "Sam", who has reportedly been identified by el-Masri as Gerhard Lehmann. Lehmann served on the United Nations Mehlis commission into the Rafik Hariri assassination before he was withdrawn in early February 2006, possibly to prevent the repercussions of his identification.