BERLIN, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- The German government is holding back key documents in the affair of former Guantanamo inmate Murat Kurnaz, a news magazine reported.
The matter is currently being probed by a German parliamentary inquiry trying to find out whether the former German government did enough to get the man released.
Berlin has repeatedly stated that there never existed an official U.S. offer to release Kurnaz; yet a document that could prove just that is being held back by the German government, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.
A top-level meeting in the chancellor's office on Oct. 29, 2002, debated Kurnaz's fate; a high ranking intelligence official in the meeting, according to the magazine, produced a document stating "the United States has asked whether Kurnaz should be extradited to Germany or Turkey."
Inquiry members have called for this document and other files to become accessible, but the German government has refused, arguing the files touched on "key areas of the German executive."
The top-level meeting at the time decided Kurnaz was still a security risk and should not be granted entry to Germany.
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 proven links to terrorist groups. He was released last summer upon the intervention of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The case has troubled Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who at the time headed the chancellor's office. Steinmeier has to fend off allegations that he was the key man blocking Kurnaz's return to Germany.
