A story about the young man from Germany who was tortured by his American jailers before he was found to be innocent and was released after more than four years in Guantanamo surfaced in today’s issue of The Washington Post. The reason for the article about the case, which is not new, is a Supreme Court hearing today about whether the military tribunals in Guantanamo are legitimate.
Twenty-five-year-old Murat Kurnaz has related in numerous public appearances and in a book exactly what American torturers did to him after he was captured in Pakistan in 2001 and then taken first to a jail in Afghanistan and later to Guantanamo. He was set free and returned to Germany in 2006. The torture details are worth remembering and will be repeated here.
Murat Kurnaz was born in Germany, but he is not a German citizen. According to German law, any child born in Germany acquires the citizenship of either its father or mother, as the parents wish. Kurnaz’s parents are Turkish citizens; therefore, he is a Turkish citizen from birth with an unlimited residency permit for Germany. Read on to see after the fold why this played a role in his case.
Murat Kurnaz, a big strapping man who once worked as a bouncer at nightclubs in Germany, decided in his late teens that it was time for him to change his listless lifestyle, and he turned to Islam as the inspiration for the new life he wanted to lead. In 2001, he decided to go to a Koran school in Pakistan, the wrong decision at the wrong time, when the world was in an uproar over the terrorist attacks in the United States. Some media reports say he admired the Taliban and the Islamic regime they had set up in Afghanistan. Pakistanis turned him over Americans to collect bounty, and he was taken to an American jail in Afghanistan. From there he was transferred to Guantanamo.
Murat Kurnaz
US investigations eventually figured out that he had not committed any crime, and The Washington Post leads on evidence of his innocence being rejected at Guantanamo, using that to hit at the military tribunal issue.
"...two U.S. military tribunals that were responsible for determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were enemy fighters declared him a dangerous al-Qaeda ally who should remain in prison."
Washington Post
His lawyers sued the Pentagon to get access to military and court documents that show what happened to him. A memo written by an American by the name of David B. Lacquement, who was a US brigadier general at the time, is said to have played a major role in influencing tribunal members against Kurnaz. Parts of the memo still have not been revealed, but in the comments that are now available the brigadier general wrote that Kurnaz had prayed while The Star-Spangled Banner was being played over loudspeakers in prison. The general also wrote that Kurnaz had displayed an unusual interest in detainee transfers and guard schedules. Moreover, according to the general, Kurnaz asked about the height from the ground of the rim of the basket in the basketball court in the prison yard, allegedly a hint of escape plans.
Lacquement’s memo came after intelligence reports had concluded there was no basis to hold Kurnaz. The Washington Post in today’s issue published new details from a US district judge’s conclusion about the military decision-making in the Kurnaz case.
The Opinion
Kurnaz has provided gruesome details of what Americans did to him. Much of it is available from German media on the Internet. He said Americans in Afghanistan had put electric wires on his hands and feet for what he thought was going to be a lie-detector test, but it turned out to be torture with electroshocks. He has also told how Americans pushed his head into a bucket of water while one of them kicked him in the stomach, making him breathe in water as he gasped for air.
Torture Details
Kurnaz said an American officer in Afghanistan had placed a loaded gun to his head and threatened to shoot him if he did not cooperate. He also described an interrogation session in Guantanamo during which he said he was sexually humiliated. Afterwards, he said, he was beaten and put in solitary confinement.
Amnesty International
The case attracted widespread attention in Germany after German security forces were reported to have passed on information about Kurnaz’s life in Germany to their American colleagues. German authorities have been very active in cooperating with the United States since the Arab terrorists of September 11, 2001 had lived quietly in Germany while they worked out their attack plans. Reports that Germany had initially refused to accept Kurnaz when the US offered to release him from Guantanamo, saying he was not a German citizen. Fuel was added to flames of indignation when the German public learned that German military men cooperating with the Americans had visited Kurnaz in Afghanistan where they had abused him during questioning. The case led to a German parliamentary inquiry.
In March this year, a scandal brought the inquiry to an abrupt halt after it was announced that important documents from the constitutional authorities in Kurnaz’s hometown of Bremen had mysteriously disappeared. The documents allegedly backed up German allegations that Kurnaz had been correctly classified as dangerous and justified German collaboration with Americans on the case. No independent inquiry, however, will ever be able to examine those documents now.
Parliamentary Inquiry
Kurnaz has written a book about his ordeal, Five Years of My Life. An Innocent Man in Guantanamo.
Former US Brigadier General David B. Lacquement is now a major general. He declined a request by The Washington Post to comment on the Kurnaz case. Biography information is available on the Internet under his name. A link to this information may not be given here.
Lacquement is stationed at Fort Belvoir, just south of Washington, D.C., if anyone wants to go there and take a good look at one of the men who have helped make America’s crimes possible, here is how to get there.
Fort Belvoir
Lacquement looks just like millions of other American jocks, perhaps a little overweight for a military man. That’s one of the terrible aspects of evil: the faces of perpetrators often look so normal. Here he is getting a cordial handshake from Rudy Giuliani.
The Handshake
The Pentagon has made nebulous remarks about knowing more about the case than they can reveal. The first reaction to that position among some Americans today seems to be, "Show me first why we should think the Pentagon is not lying again." Someday the crimes committed in the name of us Americans are going to come back to haunt us, and it would be wise for us to know in detail what the rest of the world is going to be calling us to account for.