German Government Abandoned Citizen at Gitmo

Posted on Jan 26, 2007

politikforum.de

Germans are outraged over the emergence of documents that suggest a government official allowed an innocent German citizen to remain in Guantanamo for years after the United States offered to repatriate him.

Los Angeles Times:

The case began in 2001 when Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk, was arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of being a militant. He was transferred to Afghanistan, where he says American interrogators hung him from chains. He was sent to Guantanamo and held there until last August, when he was released.

He was never charged with a crime.

Intelligence documents cited by German media suggest Kurnaz, a 24-year-old shipbuilder, could have been freed years earlier.

The files indicate that the CIA offered to release Kurnaz and return him to Germany in 2002. One German intelligence operative noted that Kurnaz might be persuaded to turn informer and infiltrate radical Islamic networks. At the time Kurnaz’s fate was being decided, Steinmeier oversaw German spy agencies as chief of staff to then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

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