A GERMAN citizen held by the CIA in Afghanistan for five months is to start a lawsuit against the US Administration.

The case of Khalid Masri highlights the pitfalls of “extraordinary rendition”, says the American Civil Liberties Union, which backs his case.

Mr Masri, a father of five and of Lebanese origin, was detained in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003 on suspicion of having a false passport and because his name sounded like that of an al-Qaeda suspect.

He was held for 23 days in a windowless motel room before the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Centre’s al-Qaeda unit in Skopje persuaded the Macedonians to hand him over.

A former CIA official told The Washington Post that the local agency chief “believed he was someone else”. The official added: “She didn’t really know. She just had a hunch.”

Mr Masri was handcuffed and blindfolded, bundled into a van and driven to an airport building, where he was drugged and put in a jumpsuit. He said later that he had seen “seven or eight men with black clothing and wearing masks”.

He said that in Afghanistan he was put in the “salt pit”, a cold, dirty cellar with no light and one blanket. On the first night, he said, he was kicked, beaten and told: “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 CIA is said to have concluded by March that his passport was genuine and that it had the wrong man. It decided to release him, but he was held for two more months before being flown to Albania and dumped in a wood.

Today’s lawsuit will say that CIA officials violated US and universal human rights laws.

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