BERLIN, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Files relating to the case of a former German-Turkish Guantanamo inmate have disappeared, according to a German newspaper.
According to the Berliner Zeitung Tuesday, Germany's Federal Intelligence Agency, or BND, misplaced transcripts of interrogations with Murat Kurnaz conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Kurnaz, a Turkish national born and raised in the German city of Bremen, spent four and a half years in the U.S. military Guantanamo Bay prison despite no links to terrorist groups. He was released last summer upon the intervention of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A parliamentary inquiry is probing whether the former German government did enough to get him released.
The missing transcripts could have rendered illegitimate all accusations of being an Islamist and alleged links to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, the newspaper said, citing a confidential transcript of a parliamentary inquiry hearing earlier this month, during which the loss of the documents was mentioned.
A BND official said that the intelligence agency had no idea of the whereabouts of the CIA transcripts. "With respect to these documents, unfortunately I have to say: we don't know what happened," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "The agency moved from Munich to Berlin and during the move a considerable number of files were destroyed. Unfortunately we don't know what precisely happened to these files."
Observers said the documents may have been destroyed to do away with evidence proving that Germany knew that Kurnaz was innocent.
The report was denied by several inquiry board members Tuesday.
