BERLIN, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- The German government decided Thursday the case of a former Guantanamo inmate will get its own parliamentary inquiry, a move that worries the opposition.
The case circles around the allegations of German-Turkish Murat Kurnaz, who claims he was abused by two soldiers of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, while in a secret prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Two men wearing German camouflage uniforms had smashed his head into the ground, with U.S. soldiers watching, he said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and its coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, decided to authorize the defense ministry's commission to independently handle the allegations in what will be a separate parliamentary inquiry.
Another inquiry is already underway to probe other possible German wrongdoing in the war on terror, including dubious interrogations in secret prisons, and cooperation with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
The opposition fears the defense ministry's inquiry will lack transparency, as it meets behind closed doors, while the other inquiry meets in public. Opposition lawmakers had called for Kurnaz' allegations to be handled in public.
Hans-Christian Stroebele, a Green Party lawmaker, said the government had to name the soldiers who came in contact with Kurnaz; those soldiers then should testify in parliament, he added. The government's strategy so far had been one of "disguise and deceit," Stroebele told German news channel N-TV.
The two soldiers belong to the KSK elite unit of the Bundeswehr, a rapid deployment force often active in crisis regions. Defense ministry officials first denied that the KSK was in Afghanistan at the time; earlier this week after questioning soldiers they admitted to the KSK's presence in Kandahar and to contacts with Kurnaz, but strongly denied that German soldiers had abused him.
"Of course no soldier will say: 'I abused and tortured him,'" Stroebele said.
