Germany negotiates to free detainee(with US)

[cal04]

GERMAN diplomats in Washington are negotiating with the US for the release of a German citizen held for almost four years at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a government spokesman said overnight. Negotiations between embassy representatives and the US authorities in Washington started when the chancellor Angela Merkel visited President George W. Bush last month, the German government source said.

Bernhard Docke, lawyer for the prisoner, Murat Kurnaz, 23, said Saturday he expected a result from the negotiations in the "near future". According to an article to be published Monday in the German weekly Focus, President Bush told Chancellor Merkel he would free Kurnaz on condition that Germany give "guarantees of security", the details of which are now being discussed by German diplomats and government security experts.

Mr Kurnaz, a Turk born in the north German city of Bremen, was arrested in 2002 by American forces in Pakistan, where he had moved in 2001. The German press nicknamed him "The Taliban of Bremen". Extradited to the US under suspicion of terrorism, he complained to his lawyer a year ago of having undergone sexual humiliation by female soldiers at the detention centre. The German government hopes Mr Kurnaz will be released by the summer, according to Focus.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18122651%255E1702,00.html

[benburch]

1. Bad idea.

Never negotiate with terrorists.

[High Plains]

2. I didn't know Angela Merkel was a terrorist.

[benburch]

3. Nope...

The USA is.