BERLIN, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- The case of a former Guantanamo inmate is evolving into a disaster for German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, with politicians from all parties unwilling to rule out a collective demand for his resignation.
The man who could bring about the downfall of one of Germany's most powerful politicians one day stopped cutting his facial hair. The decision, made in 2002 in a tiny, windowless cell at the controversial U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has led to the long bushy beard Murat Kurnaz proudly sports as a symbol of his suffering.
Born and raised in Bremen in 1982, Kurnaz, a Turkish national, traveled to Pakistan shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities in November 2001 and was shipped to a U.S. prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. In January 2002, he was transferred to Guantanamo where he stayed until his release in the summer of 2006.
Kurnaz is not classified a terrorist, and if U.S. and German intelligence experts are to believed, he never should have gone to Guantanamo in the first place.
As early as October 2002, after U.S. experts deemed Kurnaz no security risk, Washington according to a new report by the European Parliament and several German media reports offered to release the man to Germany. Kurnaz, they had found, had no terror contacts, but had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But Berlin, at the time led by a Social Democratic/Green Party government under Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, refused to take Kurnaz back. After a top meeting in the chancellor's office at the end of October, it was decided to refuse Kurnaz's return to Germany. The next day, the German interior ministry presented a plan that included removing the residence permit from the inmate's passport.
A key figure in the decision to "actively block" Kurnaz's release was Steinmeier, media reports said, who at the time as the head of Schroeder's chancellor's office was coordinator of the intelligence services -- that means Steinmeier must have seen the documents pointing to Kurnaz's innocence. Also under scrutiny are former Interior Minister Otto Schily and former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, but both are retired by now.
The decision is especially cynical in light of Germany's sharp public criticism of Guantanamo. Why would a left-leaning German government expose one of its residents to another four years of abusive treatment and solitary confinement if it knew he was innocent?
"Until this day, I see no real reason why Germany, if it had the offer from the U.S., did not take it up after both sides had established that Kurnaz was not a terror suspect," Kurnaz's German lawyer Bernhard Docke -- who has fought relentlessly for the man's release -- last week told a parliamentary inquiry committee tasked with investigating the Germany's possible wrongdoings in the fight against terrorism.
Maybe because Berlin was not so sure about Kurnaz's innocence: After all, the Americans pinned strict security conditions to his release, including 24-hour surveillance, German mass-daily Bild said. Also, Germany was asked to accept two more Guantanamo inmates from China, which led to Berlin's refusal of the deal, the newspaper added.
Nevertheless, Steinmeier is coming under increasing pressure to clarify his role in the affair, with opposition politicians calling for a quick testimony before the investigative committee, where Kurnaz and Docke spoke last week.
Some politicians have been unwilling to rule out Steinmeier's resignation.
Sigfried Kauder, a senior politician inside Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the head of the inquiry committee, told newspaper Die Welt that if the allegations were true, "then this can't remain without consequences."
Steinmeier is one of Chancellor Merkel's top politicians, and his resignation would mean the first hefty crisis for the German grand coalition government, and spell disaster for the German plans to revive the Middle East process in the first half of 2007.
Merkel through her spokesman Monday said she was standing behind her foreign minister, but that backing could dissolve rather quickly if further allegations surface.
