One hallmark of professional journalists is their claim to at least get the facts straight. Don’t expect as much from Spiegel’s online international edition. In Spiegel’s latest addition of its “America = Bad” series, this one deals with those alleged secret CIA prisons in Europe, the following is offered:

In Germany, there is at least one documented case of the CIA abducting a German citizen – Khaled el-Masri from the southern city of Neu-Ulm.

The CIA is sneaking around Europe itself kidnapping people off the streets of the southern German city of Neu-Ulm. Right? Wrong. From Spiegel’s previous story on the very same case:

El-Masri, namely, is part of one of the most unusual criminal cases in recent years. The father of four claims he was kidnapped by United States agents one year ago in Macedonia, carted off to a prison in Afghanistan, and accused of being an al-Qaida terrorist.

This story is bad enough with mistakes made by the US. Is it too much to ask that Spiegel at least check their own archives and be consistent with their own “facts”?

One wonders, what else in the article is untrue?