Berlin - Khaled El-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent who attacked the mayor of a southern German town last month, was possibly motivated by hurt religious feelings after a brothel opened near a mosque, lawyers said on Monday.

El-Masri stormed into the office of Neu-Ulm Mayor Gerold Noerenberg on September 11, punched him and threw a chair at the man, inflicting hand and face injuries which required medical treatment.

The 46-year-old, who was held by the CIA in Afghanistan for nearly six months, was arrested after the attack.

Prosecutors said they had found a letter, which stated that the mosque where El-Masri's children prayed had been desecrated when a brothel was opened up nearby.

The legal team speculated that El-Masri blamed Noerenberg for granting the sex club a licence. The Neu-Ulm mosque closed a while back.

El-Masri has spent time in a psychiatric clinic after setting fire to a market in Neu-Ulm in January 2007. He was later given a two-year suspended sentence for arson.

El-Masri, who has remained silent since the attack, has been kept in custody for fear of repeat offence. He is to be charged after undergoing psychiatric assessment.

In 2004 El-Masri was seized by the CIA in Skopje, Macedonia, and transferred to Afghanistan where he spent nearly six months undergoing interrogation. After his return to Germany, prosecutors in Munich issued a series of arrest warrants against CIA agents.

El-Masri took legal action in the United States to find out why he had been kidnapped, but a US court dismissed the action in October 2007.(dpa)