 |
| Hearing: Murat Kurnaz (l.) talked to lawmakers (top right) via videolink from Bremen, Germany. Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP |
Guantánamo ex-detainee tells Congress of abuse
Murat Kurnaz, who testified in a landmark hearing Tuesday, says he spent days chained to the ceiling of an airplane hanger. He was determined innocent in 2002, but held until 2006.
from the May 22, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
Kurnaz, dressed in a black satin pinstriped suit and seated next to his lawyer, also claimed he was routinely beaten, subjected to extreme temperatures, and chained by his arms to a ceiling, adding that "the pain from this treatment was beyond belief."
Having grown up in Germany, which was schooled in the rule of law by the US, he said he "couldn't believe Americans would do these kinds of things."
Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to comment on his treatment, but said in a written statement, "The abuses Mr. Kurnaz alleges are not only unsubstantiated and implausible, they are simply outlandish."
The Bush administration has repeatedly insisted that those held at Guantánamo are enemy combatants that pose a threat to the US. Earlier this month, for example, a former detainee from Kuwait was found to have participated in a suicide bombing in Iraq.
Why he was kept for four more years
Two months into his detention, in February 2002, Kurnaz was moved from Afghanistan to Guantánamo.
In September of that year, three German intelligent agents were invited to the island to interrogate him under CIA supervision.
According to transcripts of testimony they later gave before Germany's parliament, the US and German intelligence agencies agreed that there was no evidence of links to terrorism and cleared him for release. But German officials, wary of looking soft on terrorism after a Hamburg cell was found to have played a key role in the 9/11 attacks a year earlier, blocked his return.
Apparently as a result, Kurnaz stayed at Guantánamo for another four years. The Pentagon summary from his August 2004 tribunal proceedings show that the key charge against him was that he was "a close associate with, and planned to travel to Pakistan with" a man named Selcuk Bilgin, who, the Pentagon claimed, "later engaged in a suicide bombing."
These allegations turned out to be untrue: Mr. Bilgin is living in Germany with his wife and children, and has never been charged with any crime, according to German police.
It has since come to light that at least three classified documents in Kurnaz's Pentagon file pointed to his innocence, but because detainees do not have access to classified evidence, he had no way of knowing this.
RSS feed
){kind=link}