Disappeared: Five Years in Guantanamo

[marmar]

from the Washington Spectator, via AlterNet:


Disappeared: Five Years in Guantanamo

By Lou Dubose, The Washington Spectator. Posted July 7, 2007.



In 2001, 19-year-old Murat Kurnaz was an innocent man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Accused of being a terrorist, he spent five years in Guantanamo before being released -- now he's telling his story.

FIFTEEN AMERICAN SOLDIERS WATCHED over a man, shackled to a seat in the cargo bay of a C-17 Globemaster -- the Air Force workhorse that usually moves Abrams tanks, Chinook helicopters or infantry vehicles. Wearing goggles that shut out all light, a soundproof headset and a mask that covered his mouth so he could not speak, spit or bite, the prisoner arrived at Ramstein Air Force Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany, under the tightest security. The plane had burned through 36,000 gallons of jet fuel and had refueled in flight. During the seventeen-hour ride, the prisoner was provided with neither food nor water. Nor was he allowed to stretch his legs or relieve himself.

This was how what had been the world's greatest democracy when George W. Bush took the presidential oath in 2001 repatriated an innocent man who'd never represented a security threat to the United States. Murat Kurnaz was nineteen when he was taken off a bus in Peshawar, Pakistan. He had, as many first- or second-generation Muslims in Europe do, turned to a religion his family had abandoned when they emigrated from their native land. His religious awakening put him in proximity to Islamic fundamentalists: sufficient justification for detention by American forces, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as a supposed member of Al Qaeda.

Kurnaz was twenty-four and had been the last European held at the American prison camp in Cuba when the Globemaster touched down in Kaiserslautern in August 2006. He didn't know he'd been returned home to Germany until an American enlisted man removed his goggles and he saw three German policemen standing outside the airplane.

"He was dumped on German soil like some sort of alien," said Bernhard Docke, one of Kurnaz's attorneys, from the north German city of Bremen.

Murat’s Story

Murat Kurnaz, German born of Turkish parents, could be an expert witness and fact witness for any legislative or judicial procedure that would cast a cold eye on the transgressions of law, the Constitution or the fundamental precepts of human rights perpetrated by George Bush's terror warriors. Pick your amendment. Fifth: one is not compelled to be a witness against oneself, or deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law. Eighth: protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Fourteenth: the state cannot deprive someone of life, liberty or property without due process.

The habeas corpus statute? For innocent detainees caught up in the sweeps that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there is no legitimate legal process that can be resorted to. No legal cause of action against the U.S. government. Not even an apology, if you're released. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/55993/

[ixion]

1. this is just pathetic. Why is this tolerated?

not only is it about as freakin' unconstitutional as you can get, it's also horribly wasteful. 36K gallons of fuel wasted. How many 36K flights like this occur? We're probably talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of gallons wasted for BS crap like this, not to mention what it's doing to our international reputation.

It is simply unacceptable, IMO.

[leftchick]

2. Here is a Spiegel Article from last year...

This makes me so angry I could vomit....


http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,699826,00.jpg

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,437087,00.html

How does one talk about the emotions stirred up by a meeting with someone who has spent five years of his life in a detention camp, living in scandalous and ignoble conditions? How does one express one's sense of what that person must have experienced? The man in question is now 24 years old. During a period of almost five years -- a period during which I married, became a father and was elected into the European Parliament -- this man was effectively stripped of his rights and had to live in complete isolation, in conditions that have driven other detainees to commit suicide.

Murat Kurnaz once had a "normal" life too. He wanted to start a family in Germany, along with his Turkish fiancé. He had completed his apprenticeship as a shipbuilder. He played guitar in his free time and liked sports -- like many other people his age. Then he travelled to Pakistan in the fall of 2001, apparently in order to devote time to his religious faith and expand his knowledge about Islam by visiting religious schools. He was "in the wrong place at the wrong time," is what insiders in Washington say -- sometimes cynically, sometimes laconically. They know Kurnaz was innocent when he was apprehended and detained. The United States -- and Germany -- discovered quite quickly that the accusations against Kurnaz were groundless. And yet he was not released.

I had prepared myself to meet a broken man. But Kurnaz doesn't think he needs psychological counselling. My impression during the visit was that he hasn't lost his sense of humor. His eyes are alert, and he's curious about life and the future. It's as if he knows no one will ever give him back the years he lost, but that he can do some catching up. He could find work that allows him to use his language skills: He speaks English and Arabic in addition to German and Turkish. That would seem to be another important step out of isolation.

"May it be over"

"Gecmis olsun" -- those are the Turkish words I say to his mother, Rabiye Kurnaz. The expression literally means "May it be over." But it's the Turkish equivalent of "Get well soon!" "Gecmis olsun" -- that's what I say to a mother who has spent five long years struggling for her son's release, backed by the lawyers Bernhard Docke und Baher Azmy. They struggled for Kurnaz's release at a time when the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 radically transformed our perception of the threat Islamic terrorism poses to democracy, freedom and security. It was a time when Germany's governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens openly expressed its criticisms of US President George W. Bush's policies -- while at the same time looking the other way, apparently, when it came to the methods the CIA and European states used in the struggle against terrorism. And if the German government did look, that raises the question of why it and other European states didn't act on what they saw.

[marmar]

3. Good grief.....

If there's such a thing as a collective national karma, ours is F**KED!

[Solly Mack]

4. ...

...
k/r

[OneBlueSky]

5. under BushCo, a similar fate could befall ANYONE determined to be "suspect" . . .

arrest, indefinite detention, no charges specified, no access to attorneys . . . just see the Military Commissions Act as an example of where we're heading -- if we're not already there . . .