Clara Gutteridge, an investigator from the British human rights group Reprieve, presented her evidence before a Skopje court on Friday.

El-Masri, who says that Skopje helped the CIA kidnap him and bring him to a secret prison in Afghanistan, has demanded €50,000 and an apology from Macedonia. He was not present at the hearing.

He claims he was abducted while on a trip to Macedonia in 2003, handed over to CIA and tortured for four months at a CIA run secret prison in Afghanistan. After realising that they had the wrong man, he says CIA agents dumped him at an abandoned location in Albania.

“Every time that the evidence have been properly examined it has been concluded that Khaled el-Masri’s claims have been very credible and he has a lot of evidence to support it,” Gutteridge told Balkan Insight.

Testifying before the court in Skopje, she presented the flight path records of the US plane that allegedly picked up el-Masri at the Skopje airport and took him to a notorious secret prison in Afghanistan. She says the evidence corroborates his claims.

The German’s move to sue Macedonia follows failed attempts to have his case heard in courts in the United States and Germany.

In December, a German court rejected a lawsuit filed by el-Masri seeking to force Berlin to prosecute suspected CIA agents who allegedly illegally detained him.

“There are very, very strong institutional barriers in the United States and in Germany. All we need is for a court to be brave enough and to examine the evidence and treat it as in any other case without letting these huge political pressures interfere,” Gutteridge explained.

Macedonian state officials have insisted that el-Masri is not telling the truth. They argue that the kidnapping never happened.

Gutteridge’s testimony was taken at one of the first open hearings on the so-called extraordinary rendition programme run by the US that allegedly allowed US agents to kidnap and interrogate terror suspect without following court orders.

“The very fact that the court allowed for the testimony on this case is a great step forward,” el-Masri’s lawyer Filip Medarski told Balkan Insight.

The court case in Macedonia is likely to last at least two years, Medarski says.