Lawyers: Kurnaz Abused to the End

There has been surprisingly little coverage of the release of Murat Kurnaz from Guantanamo in the US press.  Either Americans just don’t care that individuals are being detained indefinitely and abused outside of any known laws in the name of ‘Freedom’, or they are simply numbed by the avalanche of bad news about the "War on Terror."  In any event , I was pleased that Washington Post prominantly displayed this article on its Web site concerning Kurnaz’s mistreatment:

"Lawyers for Murat Kurnaz, a German native released Thursday after spending more than four years locked up at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he was mistreated to the end by U.S. military personnel, who kept him shackled and blindfolded until his flight home landed.

Bernhard Docke, an attorney representing Kurnaz, a 24-year-old Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany, said his client was kept in a "cage" and under bright neon lights 24 hours a day during his captivity at Guantanamo. "The Americans are incorrigible, they have not learned a thing," Docke said at a news conference in Bremen, Kurnaz’s home town. "He was returned home in chains, humiliated and dishonored to the very end."

"Declassified records in his case made public last year show that he was kept behind bars and designated an enemy combatant even though U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement officials had largely concluded that there was no information tying him to al-Qaeda or terrorist activities.

Kurnaz has said he was on a missionary trip to Pakistan and was arrested while riding a bus because he was a foreigner. "The U.S. government has repeatedly said Guantanamo houses only terrorists and people from the battlefields — the worst of the worst. We know that this claim is not only an exaggeration, but a lie, and Murat Kurnaz’s case proves this," said Baher Azmy, a Seton Hall University law professor who also represents Kurnaz."

A couple of months ago I posted Azmy’s letter from Guantanamo, where he detailed the abuse at Guantanamo and earlier at Kandahar, and gave a gripping first hand of the inhumane conditions at the prison.

So what will Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response be to the reports of torture and abuse, as well as to the shameful complicity of German intelligence and law enforcement officials in affair?  Sabine LEUTHEUSSER-SCHNARRENBERGER, head of the liberal FDP caucus in the Bundestag, has demanded that Merkel speak out:

BERLIN. Zur Freilassung von Murat Kurnaz erklärt die stellvertretende Vorsitzende der FDP-Bundestagsfraktion Sabine LEUTHEUSSER-SCHNARRENBERGER:

Nach der lange herbeigesehnten Freilassung von Murat Kurnaz muss Bundeskanzlerin Merkel Farbe bekennen. Welche Schritte unternimmt die Bundesregierung, um die amerikanische Administration zu einer Schließung von Guantanamo zu bewegen?
Die Bush-Administration muss endlich den rechtsfreien Raum Guantanamo abschaffen. Alle Inhaftierten müssen nach internationalem Recht rechtsstaatlich behandelt werden.