A Munich prosecutor's office has issued arrest warrants for 13 people, some thought to have lived in North Carolina, accusing them of being part of a CIA "abduction team" and kidnapping a German citizen.

The suspects are thought to have been crew members of a 737 Boeing Business Jet, operated in January 2004 by Smithfield-based Aero Contractors. The company provides aircraft rental services with pilot, according to Dun & Bradstreet, a business information company.

The plane shuttled Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, from Macedonia to an Afghanistan jail, German prosecutors say. Masri is one of the most high-profile international cases of alleged "extraordinary rendition," or the abduction and transport of terrorism suspects to places where they can be harshly interrogated and possibly tortured.

The suspects' names, thought to be CIA aliases, have not yet been released, said Anton Winkler, a spokesman for the Munich prosecutors office, said in a telephone interview from Germany.

But the suspects were "clearly identifiable" individuals, according to a statement Wednesday from the Munich prosecutor's office. The investigation now will focus on learning the real names of the suspects, who could face charges including kidnapping and aggravated assault.

The German investigation picks up from one led by authorities in Spain. That probe obtained aviation records and documents left at Spanish resort hotels, where crew members rested between flights from Algeria to Macedonia. At the hotels, crew members left photocopies of their passports and made calls home -- some to North Carolina, says Stephen Grey, a British author of a book on rendition.

Masri has said that before the flight from Macedonia, he was blindfolded, handcuffed and beaten.

"I was thrown on the floor ... someone's boot was placed on my back," Masri said in a statement during a November visit to Washington. "Then, I felt something firm being forced inside my anus."

German officials have said Masri was the victim of mistaken identity. Someone who shared a similar name was suspected of being a terrorist linked to al-Qaeda.

Masri claims he spent four months in a CIA-run Afghanistan prison, which fellow inmates called the "Salt Pit." He was released in May 2004 and flown back to Germany. U.S. authorities never charged Masri with a crime, and they refused to hear his case in a U.S. District Court, saying it would endanger national security.

European investigators doubt the U.S. operative will ever appear in a German court. The legal cases have strained U.S.-European relations and illustrate deep differences of opinion over how terrorism should be fought.

CIA and U.S. State Department officials have refused to comment on the Masri case. The Bush administration has said anti-terror laws allow covert operations such as "extraordinary renditions." But U.S. officials have denied that the operations are meant to facilitate torture.

Questions in N.C.

Last month, 22 state legislators asked state Attorney General Roy Cooper to press the State Bureau of Investigation to investigate the allegations. In October, SBI Director Robin Pendergraft refused a request to investigate, stating she believed the agency had no jurisdiction. Attorney General Cooper has yet to respond.

Some lawmakers think the state should look into the matter because a plane involved in the Masri case -- formerly of the call number N313P -- is thought to have been stationed at the state-funded Global TransPark in Kinston.

Aero Contractors requested use of that plane for special "oceanic/remote area" flights in May 2002, according to FAA records.

In July 2002, the Smithfield-based company began paying $1,536 a month to rent a hangar at the Global TransPark in Kinston. That December, the park opened a 11,500-foot runway, the longest commercial runway in the state. The company started plans for a new hangar at the park in January 2004.

Protests of Aero

Protesters and Christian activists have staged demonstrations at Aero Contractors' facilities both in Kinston and at its headquarters at the Johnston County Airport in Smithfield. They have asked the Johnston County Sheriff, commissioners and airport authority to investigate Aero. They continue to send a barrage of letters to Global TransPark board members, including Gov. Mike Easley, requesting an investigation.

"I'm not happy with our current state government," said Khodr Zaarour, a Shaw University professor and political director of the Muslim American Public Affairs Council. "They're not interested in tackling [what] is happening in our backyard."

Andrew McGuffin, a former Marine who lives near the Wake and Johnston county border, said it's hard to sit silent knowing the possible local connection to rendition flights.

McGuffin, a lawyer for a Durham nonprofit, said he finds it ironic that the recent arrest warrants came out of Munich, "where the Nazi party was born."

"They can change," said McGuffin, a board member of the ACLU in Wake County. "We can change, too."

(Staff writer Sabine Vollmer contributed to this report.)

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