(Bloomberg) — Former German Interior Minister Otto Schily told an inquiry yesterday that he didn’t know of an alleged abduction by the US Central Intelligence Agency of Khaled el- Masri, a German of Lebanese origin, until el-Masri’s release.Schily told the parliamentary inquiry that former US ambassador to Germany Daniel Coats had informed him on May 31, 2004, about the abduction of an unidentified German passport holder, and asked him to treat the information confidentially.

The suggestion that he knew of the abduction before then “is a hypotheses from nowhere, without any factual basis,” Schily told lawmakers during a public hearing yesterday.

Schily’s testimony forms part of a parliamentary investigation into what Germany’s past and present governments knew about intelligence service activities following the 2001 terror attacks that may have broken German law.

El-Masri has said he was seized while on holiday in Macedonia on December 31, 2003, and taken to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. There, he was subjected to inhumane conditions and coercive interrogation before being released, he said.

Germany’s chancellery and foreign ministry have both rejected claims that the government in any way assisted in the alleged kidnapping. They first officially heard about it when el- Masri’s defense lawyer Manfred Gnjidic wrote to the government about his client’s case on June 8, 2004, which prompted the government to look into the matter, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on December 14 last year. One week earlier, Coats apologised to Schily about the abduction, which he said didn’t take place in Germany or the European Union, according to Schily’s testimony. El-Masri was arrested because he was on a wanted list and it was thought his passport was faked. When this turned out to be wrong, he was released, Schily said.

El-Masri received money for keeping quiet about the matter, Schily said. Coats didn’t specify the country where el-Masri was detained nor for how long, the former minister said.

Schily felt personally obliged to keep quiet about Coats’ visit because he didn’t want to endanger the exchange of information with the US intelligence services and further burden bilateral relations after divergent opinions over the Iraq war, he said, pointing out his decision would have been different if el-Masri was still detained at that time.

Steinmeier and his predecessor at the Foreign Ministry Joschka Fischer will also have to testify on el-Masri’s case before Christmas, according to the inquiry’s head, Siegfried Kauder.

Alongside el-Masri’s alleged abduction, the inquiry, set up on April 7, is examining whether the BND Federal Intelligence Service provided information to the US at or around the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003; whether the Federal Criminal Police Office questioned terror suspects being held abroad; and alleged CIA flights carrying suspected terrorists through European airspace, a process known as extraordinary rendition.