BERLIN, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- The German foreign minister may have to resign over allegations that he extended the stay of an innocent Guantanamo inmate, which could plunge the German grand coalition government into its first serious crisis in the year of its European Union and Group of Eight presidencies.
These days, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, is finds himself in an ever-faster downward spiral, at the end of which analysts have spotted his resignation.
"I think it's getting really dangerous for Steinmeier, as there are now several people in the government that have begun to distance themselves from him," Ruediger Schmitt-Beck, political expert at Duisburg University, Tuesday told United Press International in a telephone interview.
Steinmeier's resignation would be a disaster for the German government at a time when it was ready to amass political clout on the global stage. Germany's EU presidency under Chancellor Angela Merkel has been heralded as the period for the 27-member body to make its self-confidence and popularity comeback. Germany has the tough job of reviving the EU constitution.
In June, Germany will hold the G8 summit and is expected to fight against climate change and for equal chances for Europe when it comes to globalization.
But all that clout would immediately be wasted, if Steinmeier had to resign, all because he misjudged the tragic story of a man with a bushy beard, who visited Pakistan immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
On Oct. 3, 2001, Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national born and raised in the northern German city of Bremen, traveled to Pakistan, visiting cities and mosques, until he was arrested in December 2001. At the time of his arrest, German intelligence agencies compiled a report that has Kurnaz linked to Taliban sympathizer; a schoolmate tells officials that Kurnaz had called 9/11 to be the "will of Allah," German news magazine Der Spiegel wrote in its latest issue.
Pakistani officials immediately handed him over to the Americans, who kept him in a prison in Kandahar before transferring him to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, at the start of 2002.
Kurnaz would end up spending four and a half years in the world's most infamous detention center, having to endure kicks and blows, electrical shocks, constant sleep deprivation and extreme heat and cold.
Yet only a few months into his detention, U.S. authorities were apparently willing to release him to Germany. The problem was that Berlin did not want to let Kurnaz into the country.
From 2002 until 2005, several media reports claim, Steinmeier was a key figure in the decision to actively block the man's return, despite reason to believe that Kurnaz was innocent.
The first signs of the prisoner's innocence were delivered by a team of three German intelligence agents and a German-based CIA agent, who interrogated Kurnaz in Guantanamo, Der Spiegel said.
After the talks, all four men agree that Kurnaz was no Islamist, but that he simply had been "in the wrong place at the wrong time."
A coded message went to the Pentagon the same day, with the CIA pleading for Kurnaz's release and military agents in Washington apparently not opposed to the idea. The Americans drew up the plan that Kurnaz could serve as an undercover agent in the Germany Islamist scene.
Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, then was the top aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the coordinator of the country's intelligence services; all the material in the Kurnaz case must have crossed his desk.
Yet at the time, roughly a year after 9/11, the entire political world -- including Germany -- was till clamping down on militant Islamism, for example by supporting harsher anti-terror legislation. Steinmeier and other leading interior and intelligence officials were unwilling to take any risks with Kurnaz.
After a top meeting in the chancellor's office at the end of October (which included Steinmeier), 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. Kurnaz was a Turkish national, and Berlin was apparently unwilling to retake a man that could potentially be a terrorist.
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?
Even the CIA was irritated by the German decision, Der Spiegel said, citing a Munich-based CIA agent who drove to the headquarters of the German Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, complaining about a "political statement against terrorism" that was unnecessarily keeping Kurnaz in Guantanamo.
Steinmeier has denied that there has ever been an "official" U.S. offer to release Kurnaz; yet in the intelligence circles, it is clear that such an offer does not come in the form of a sealed letter. One thing is clear, though: The door for Kurnaz's return to Germany was at least half open, but Steinmeier and his colleagues slammed it shut again.
"I would not act any differently today," Steinmeier said earlier this week, thus showing no sign of remorse, but rather the commitment to convince the media and the public of the necessity of his decision -- a risky gamble.
A parliamentary inquiry made up of government and opposition lawmakers is already eager to squeeze the truth out of him -- in public hearings. Moreover, classified, incriminating documents are surfacing almost daily in the German press, and an EU report has also accused the former German government of not doing enough to free Kurnaz.
Merkel, whose efforts were key toward securing Kurnaz's released in August 2006, on Wednesday met with Social Democrat party leader Kurt Schmitt-Beck to discuss the issue. She so far has sided with her foreign minister, who has been "a real asset" to her grand coalition government, Schmitt-Beck said.
"As of now, Merkel's conservatives have no interest in Steinmeier's resignation," he told UPI. "Yet there comes a moment when that view will change, and that's when he becomes more harmful than useful to the government."
