BERLIN, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he tried in 2002 to get a German-Turkish Guantanamo inmate released but the U.S. government blocked any of his advances.
Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national who was born and raised in Bremen, ended up spending four and a half years in the U.S. military prison in Cuba, and was released in the summer of 2006, after Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened with U.S. President George W. Bush.
Fischer first learned about Kurnaz's case when in January 2002 after the man's mother wrote Fischer a letter about her son, whom she feared was captured "by the Americans."
Fischer, who left politics after Merkel took over in late 2005, said although Kurnaz was a Turkish national, his interior ministry felt it should act on the man's behalf because he had spent his entire life in Germany and because the majority of the family lived in Bremen.
"This was not an everyday case. We did what we could," Fischer said Monday before a German parliamentary inquiry tasked with probing whether the German government did enough to get the man released. "But (the U.S. government) blocked heavily when it came to Guantanamo and other human rights cases," Fischer said, referring to talks with his U.S. counterpart Colin Powell.
Fischer said that in those talks he heavily criticized the dubious legal status of Guantanamo, also because "in my opinion it was clear that Guantanamo would come back to hurt the United States," as it undermined Washington's moral superiority over the terrorists.
Fischer said he believed Powell shared that view but was doomed to be silent.
"My U.S. colleague was not really able to lead a discussion," Fischer said. When it came to judging Guantanamo "there was no real difference between Colin Powell and me, those differences were higher up."
At the time, officials in the German foreign ministry were told that if information about Kurnaz was to be forwarded to another government, it would be Ankara, as Kurnaz was a Turkish national. Fischer's office, however, turned out to be the only advocate for Kurnaz in Berlin.
Germany's intelligence circles in Sept. 2002 were granted access to Kurnaz in Guantanamo. A group of three German intelligence agents flew to Cuba to interrogate Kurnaz. After two days of talks, the three Germans and their U.S. counterparts in the Central Intelligence Agency were convinced that Kurnaz had "no extremist ties."
A U.S. agent even said Kurnaz could hope to be part of a wave of inmates to be released soon. When the former German government, at the time led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, heard that Kurnaz may be released, a top-level meeting in the chancellor's office on Oct. 30, 2002, debated his fate.
The agents' findings were not mentioned in the meeting, former Deputy Interior Minister Claus Henning Schapper said before the inquiry.
Rather, the top officials in the German intelligence and criminal prosecution scene were still convinced that Kurnaz posed a security risk. The prosecution office in Bremen, the northern German city where Kurnaz was born and raised, had started investigating him in late 2002, shortly after Kurnaz had left Germany for Pakistan.
Without informing his mother Rabiye, who was worried that her son could do "something wrong," during his trip, Kurnaz flew to Pakistan on Oct. 3, 2002, less than a month after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and days before the U.S. went to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ahead of the trip, Kurnaz's family members -- who are predominantly secular -- observed that the 21-year-old had become increasingly religious. After a few weeks, Kurnaz was arrested by Pakistani police and turned over to the Americans, who kept him in Afghanistan and a few weeks later transferred him to Guantanamo.
Relying on testimonials from co-workers and acquaintances, the prosecutors came to the conclusion that Kurnaz was radicalized by a Bremen Imam and traveled to Pakistan with the plan to fight the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
With that information in mind (and lacking knowledge about the findings of the three agents), the top-level meeting in the chancellor's office decided that Kurnaz should not return to Germany; the interior ministry was even tasked with finding legal ways to prevent a return.
While the opposition believes the German refusal to take back Kurnaz prolonged the man's stay in Guantanamo, Hans-Georg Maassen, an immigration expert in the interior ministry, said the common belief in the German government was that Kurnaz -- granted Washington was willing to release him -- would be extradited to Turkey.
"There was never the possibility Bremen or Guantanamo, but always Bremen or Turkey," said Maassen, who was also the man who found out that because Kurnaz had spent six months outside Germany, his residence permit had become legally invalid.
Completely clueless of those developments, Fischer's foreign ministry continued to plead Kurnaz's case through diplomatic channels, while the remaining offices saw Berlin had done what was necessary.
The foreign minister nevertheless defended the former government and the security officials, arguing that they had the tough job to secure the country right after the 9/11 attacks. After all, doubts remained whether Kurnaz really was innocent, he added.
Allegations by the opposition that the former government had acted "heartless" in the Kurnaz case and had prolonged his stay in Guantanamo were "factually wrong and politically rotten," he said.
