Allegations that the CIA station chief in Algiers drugged and raped Muslim women may hurt efforts by President Barack Obama to improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world, Algerian dailies said on Saturday. "Sex, rape and video at the U.S. embassy in Algiers," wrote Algeria's most influential French-language newspaper El Watan in a front page headline.
The explosive allegations could potentially deal a major blow to the U.S. image abroad at a time when Obama has called for "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect" with the Muslim world.
The case "will be seen as the typical ugly American," ABC News quoted former CIA officer Bob Baer as saying. "My question is how the CIA would not have picked up on this in their own regular reviews of CIA officers overseas."
ABC news was the first to report that two Algerian women had complained they had been separately drugged and sexually abused by the CIA officer at his official residence in September 2007 and February 2008. |