"Khaled el-Masri was found inadmissible to the United States on the basis of ... terrorist activities, and issued a visa on the basis of a waiver from the Department of Homeland Security," a State Department official authorized to speak to the media told United Press International.

The official declined to comment further, saying that the details of visa decisions were confidential under federal law. Department of Homeland Security Spokesman Russ Knocke also declined comment on the specific case, saying only that "We're always going to err on the side of security" when making decisions about who to let into the country.

In U.S. law a visa, issued by the consular affairs division of the State Department, does not give a foreigner the right to enter the United States -- something that is only granted at the port of entry by inspectors working for the Department of Homeland Security.

"He could still be turned away" if he was on the U.S. watch-list of known or suspected terrorists, said one official.

By seeking a waiver from Homeland Security for the visa, the State Department would ensure that the two agencies were on the same page, said Elizabeth Quinn, an immigration lawyer working on el-Masri's case.

"I think in a case like this, where you have that history, it would make sense to have some communication (between the departments) prior to issuing the visa," she said.

Quinn said a U.S. consulate in Germany had issued the visa and her client expected to receive it in the next two days.

El-Masri, a German citizen of Egyptian origin, alleged in a lawsuit last year that he was stopped at the Macedonian border in December 2003 while on holiday, when his name turned up on a terrorism watch-list. He was handed over to U.S. officials, who beat and drugged him, and took him to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he was detained without charge and subject to "coercive interrogation" for five months.

After five months, his lawsuit says, he was "deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania."

His case, like that of Abu Omar, the Egyptian cleric kidnapped by the CIA in Rome, has become a lightning rod for European unease about U.S. strategies in its war on terror. But it also illustrates the ambiguous nature of attitudes on the other side of the Atlantic. Media reports in Germany have said it was an assessment by their own security services that led to the United States watch-listing el-Masri in the first place.

Above all, the case illustrates the challenges U.S. officials face as they attempt to act against secretive networks of Islamic extremists, sometimes with only partial, or even inaccurate, information about their membership; and the dilemmas U.S. intelligence is grappling with in secret about what to believe about whom -- and how far to go in interrogating a man who says he is innocent and knows nothing.

El-Masri has always denied any link to terrorism, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last year that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had apologized for what she called "a mistake."

The ACLU, which represents el-Masri in his detention lawsuit, welcomed the news that he would be granted a visa. "You would hope that after wrongfully detaining this man, torturing him, and then dumping him in Albania, they would have decency to let him come into the country to meet his lawyers," said ACLU attorney Anne Beeson.

But when el-Masri sought to enter the United States last December under the visa waiver program, he was denied entry.

His lawyers said that he was met off the plane by Homeland Security officials and taken to an interview room for what is called secondary immigration screening. After explaining the purpose of his trip, el-Masri "quite rightly refused to cooperate with authorities ... until his U.S. lawyer was present," ACLU attorney Steven Watt told UPI.

He was told he was inadmissible under the visa waiver program, but could apply for a visa.

Two federal officials confirmed to UPI at the time that el-Masri's name was on the secret U.S. watch-list of known or suspected terrorists, the Terrorist Screening Database.

One of them told UPI that there was a high-level dispute last year between the State Department and another agency, which had originally "nominated" el-Masri to the list. "State wanted him taken off," said the official, adding that the dispute had risen to what he called "a high level" within the agencies involved.

No one at the FBI-led interagency Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the watch-list, returned requests for comment. But officials have in the past said that, when agencies disagree, an effort is made to reach a consensus about an individual, and the final decision lies with the center.

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