Khaled Masri, an unemployed father of five from south Germany, has become the unwanted posterchild of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme.

In a lawsuit due to be filed against the CIA tomorrow to coincide with the meeting between Condoleezza Rice and Angela Merkel, the new German Chancellor, Masri has claimed that he was abducted by the American government for five months in 2004. A German state prosecutor is also investigating his case.

Masri, a German citizen of Arab descent, has also given an interview to The Washington Post, in which he tells how on New Year's Eve in 2003 he argued with his wife, stormed out of his house in the historic city of Ulm, and took a bus to Macedonia. He says that when he reached the border, Macedonian guards took him off the bus because his name was similar to an associate of one of the September 11 hijackers.

According to Masri and accounts given by unnamed CIA officials in The Washington Post, Masri was then held for 23 days in a motel in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, while CIA officers arged over his case.

In the end, the eagerness of a junior officer in the CIA's Skopje office and a gut feeling on the part of the head of the CIA's al-Qaeda unit contrived to have Masri sent to a prison for terrorist suspects known as "The Salt Pit" in Afghanistan.

"Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit 'believed he was someone else', one former CIA official said. 'She didn't really know. She just had a hunch,'" The Washington Post reported.

Masri's account of his abduction follows what is believed to be the standard protocol of the "extraordinary rendition" programme. He was taken to an airport, stripped and drugged by men wearing black clothes and masks. After a day of flights and travelling, he was woken in Afghanistan.

"Masri said his cell in Afghanistan was cold, dirty and in a cellar, with no light and one dirty cover for warmth. The first night he said he was kicked and beaten and warned by an interrogator: 'You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know,'" the Post said.

After six weeks of interviews and malnourishment - Masri has not accused the US Government of torturing him - the CIA learned that his passport and identity were genuine, according to The Washington Post, and that he must be released.

After a debate between the CIA, the State Department and Dr Rice, then President Bush's National Security Advisor, Masri found himself released on a deserted country road in Albania.

"He said he was quickly met by three armed men. They drove all night, arriving in the morning at Mother Teresa Airport in Tirana. Masri said he was escorted onto the plane, past all the security checkpoints, by an Albanian.

"Masri has been reunited with his children and wife, who had moved the family to Lebanon because she did not know where her husband was. Unemployed and lonely, Masri says neither his German nor Arab friends dare associate with him because of the publicity," The Washington Post said.

In May 2004, days before Masri's release, the newspaper claims that the American Ambassador to Germany, Daniel R Coats, was sent to the then German Interior Minister, Otto Schily, to describe the Masri case. "There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public," the newspaper said.

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