BERLIN, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- The pressure on Germany's foreign minister is rising after a newspaper reported that Berlin in 2002 had the chance to free a German-Turkish Guantanamo inmate.
Contrary to what German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has previously said, the German Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, in September and October 2002 negotiated with the United States to release Murat Kurnaz, a man born and raised in the northern German city of Bremen, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper said Wednesday.
"There are good chances that Kurnaz ... could be released as early as November 2002," the newspaper quoted from unknown letters from the BND to then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's office, at the time headed by Steinmeier.
The BND wanted to use Kurnaz as an insider into the German Islamist scene, the newspaper said. Steinmeier has said he never had a U.S. offer to release the man, who at the time was already classified as no security risk by German and U.S. intelligence.
It is unknown why the German government refused Kurnaz's return to Germany, but several newspapers have said Steinmeier was a key man in the decision.
Kurnaz ended up spending four and a half years in Guantanamo before he was released on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's intervention in August 2006.
A parliamentary inquiry is currently probing whether the former German government did enough to free the innocent inmate, and Steinmeier is expected to testify before the inquiry within the next few months.
Several opposition politicians have called for his resignation, while Merkel has so far sided with her foreign minister.
However, pressure is rising also from outside Germany: In an official European Parliament report on CIA activities in Europe, a cross-party committee has accused the former German government of not having worked hard enough for the release of Kurnaz from Guantanamo.
