Tortured And Innocent

Rachel Joy Larris

August 25, 2006

After four hellish years in Guantanamo, Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish man with German residency, was released back to Germany this week with a final “f-you” from our government. According to his lawyer, for his flight home Kurnaz was “kept blindfolded and in chains.” Sure, prisoners are often transported in chains (although why the blindfold?) but aside from the fact that sending him back to Germany was pretty much an admission that Kurnaz wasn’t considered “dangerous,” it’s just a plain outrage that our government couldn’t resist getting in one final dig at the guy after reportedly torturing him for years while he was in their custody. But here’s the other outrage: Reuters, which first covered the details about the flight, failed to mention a key fact about Kurnaz: that he was cleared of being al-Qaida and was never charged with any crime.

Here’s the quote from his lawyer:

"The Americans are incorrigible; they have not learned a thing. He was returned home in chains, humiliated and dishonored to the very end by the Americans," lawyer Bernhard Docke said.

Reuters is not the only news source guilty of ignoring this important fact. A review of other articles reveal that today there was not a single story that mentioned both the chaining-and-blindfolding and Kurnaz’s innocence. The Associated Press, and many other media outlets who wrote about Kurnaz’s release on Thursday did mention his long legal journey to freedom and alleged torture, but no stories referenced the later details about his treatment on the flight home.

This is a big omission because it allows the Bush administration’s actions seem reasonable—they were merely transporting a potentially “dangerous” prisoner—not giving back an innocent man to his country.

Kurnaz was on a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001 when he was pulled off and shortly after shipped to Guantanamo. A U.S. military tribunal in 2005 officially determined him to be a member of al-Qaida. But it was later reveled the only evidence against him was one signed memo from “an unidentified military official,” which concludes without offering any proof or evidence that Kurnaz was an al-Qaida member.

The Command Intelligence Task Force, the investigative arm of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay facility, repeatedly suggested that it may have been a mistake to take Kurnaz off a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001.

"CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaida or making any specific threat against the U.S.," one document says. "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of Al Quaeda."

A lot of people assumed that Kurnaz was picked up as a mistake and not let go because it would have made the administration look foolish. So, to cover up that embarrassment, they decided to make him spend his last hours in U.S. custody being tied down and blindfolded. Not unlike justice in our country.