BERLIN, March 22 (UPI) -- Murat Kurnaz, a former Guantanamo inmate, has been spied on by German intelligence for several months after his release.
So far, German officials said the surveillance of Kurnaz stopped last December; the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported Thursday, however, that agents followed Kurnaz for several more weeks, mainly because a German parliamentary inquiry was still probing his case. An agent surveyed Kurnaz for two hours on Feb. 1, 2007, in Bremen, the newspaper said.
The German Parliament is currently probing whether the former German government did enough to free Kurnaz from Guantanamo. According to media reports, Washington offered to release him a few months into his detention in 2002, but Berlin refused.
Kurnaz was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001 and 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.
