The German government has dropped its demand to US authorities for the arrest of 13 suspects in the alleged CIA-backed abduction of a German citizen, according to an issue of Der Spiegel due to appear Monday.
"To avoid an open conflict with the American authorities, the German government will not follow up the demand by the prosecutors in Munich to proceed with the arrest of 13 CIA agents," the weekly magazine said.
A court in the southern German city of Munich had ordered arrest warrants for 13 people in January in connection with the case of Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German whose case is regarded as one of the most notorious US "renditions" of a terror suspect.