German Commission to Investigate BND Activities During the Iraq War

The lower house of the German parliament has established a commission to investigate claims that the BND, Germany’s federal intelligence service, quietly helped the US select bombing targets during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The BND has admitted that two of its agents worked with the US in Baghdad during the invasion, but insists that the agents only helped the US identify civilian locations that needed to be protected from military action. An earlier parliamentary investigation that met in private has already cleared the BND of any wrongdoing.

The commission, which will meet in public and has the power to hear evidence, will also investigate whether German authorities were involved in the CIA’s kidnapping of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, and whether they had knowledge of the CIA flights that transported suspected terrorists through European airspace.

Interestingly, the three opposition parties that demanded the commission — the Free Democrats, the Greens, and the Left Party — were only able to muster a majority of votes because Chancellor Merkel’s coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats abstained, even though it is opposed to the investigation. According to Susanne Kastner, a Social Democrat lawmaker and vice-president of the lower house, “[i]t is a tradition in the German parliament that government parties abstain” to allow the opposition to set up such inquiries.