Guantanamo: The absurd tale of an innocent man held for almost five years

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,759343,00.html

04/27/2011

An Innocent in the Terror Prison

The Guantanamo File on Germany's Murat Kurnaz

By John Goetz and Britta Sandberg

The Americans built Guantanamo to hold the most dangerous terrorists, but secret files show that their information on the inmates was often based just on rumors and suspicions. The file on Bremen-born prisoner Murat Kurnaz chronicles the absurd tale of an innocent man held for almost five years.

The "Detainee Assessment" for Murat Kurnaz, prisoner US9TU-000061DP, is nine pages long and dated May 19, 2006. The cover page includes a photo, but all you can see are his eyes and forehead, the rest of his face is ominously drowned in darkness.

Number 61 in the identifier indicates that the prisoner arrived at Guantanamo during its very early days. Kurnaz, a Turkish national who was born in Germany, was prisoner No. 61 out of an eventual total of 779 inmates held here.

At the time he landed at Guantanamo on a US Defense Department aircraft on Feb. 13, 2002, the camp had only existed for a few weeks, and the world was seeing the first images of prisoners there wearing orange overalls and being held in cages. Then-US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called them the "worst of the worst," and said they needed be locked away. At the time, General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered even more drama when he said, "These are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines at the back of a C-17 to bring it down."