Apparently, Berlin did not help Murat Kurnaz from Bremen, despite recommendations to the contrary
In the affair surrounding the illegal deportation of Murat Kurnaz, Federal Minister of the Interior Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) is increasingly on the defensive. Little by little, intelligence information is coming to light that is in stark contradiction to the SPD politician’s previous statements. Until now, Steinmeier had insisted that, as head of the German Chancellor’s Office, he had not known about an offer by the USA to release Kurnaz. This version is now more than questionable.
What did Frank-Walter Steinmeier? In the ongoing confusion over his role in the affair surrounding the years-long Guantanamo detention of Bremen’s Murat Kurnaz, the SPD politician is coming under increasing prere. The accounts of the events have changed several times in the past weeks. The former head of the Chancellor’s Office and current Minister of Defense claims to have known nothing about an offer of release by the USA. Now the opposite seems to be proven. Then last week it was said that the SPD-Green government did not want to let Kurnaz re-enter the country because of security concerns. Now an assessment of the Federal Intelligence Service from September 2002 has become public with a statement to the contrary. In the midst of this potpourri of half-truths and protective allegations, Frank-Walter Steinmeier is only sure of one thing: resignation is not an option for him.
More and more new facts about the Kurnaz case
It is largely due to the German government’s policy of obstruction that the case of Murat Kurnaz, a Turk who grew up in Bremen, has now become a state affair. Kurnaz was arrested in Pakistan in November 2001 and taken to a U.S. torture camp in Afghanistan. From August 2002 to August 2006, he was held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Although during this time there was increasing evidence that he had never belonged to al-Qaida, leading representatives of the then SPD-Green federal government apparently prevented his return.
The 29. October 2002 could now become Steinmeier’s fateful day. On that day, the SPD politician took part in a meeting of intelligence service presidents in Berlin, at which the re-entry of the then 20-year-old was rejected. Steinmeier’s participation in the meeting has meanwhile also been confirmed by a spokesman for the Foreign Office. The Berliner Zeitung also quoted Friday from a letter to former Secretary of the Interior Claus Henning Schapper (SPD). The letter explains how Kurnaz could be deprived of his residence permit for the area covered by the Schengen Agreement. Steinmeier was aware of all this.
The media reports are particularly explosive because the German government and its leading member Steinmeier should have known better at the time. The Frankfurter Rundschau reported on a report of three employees of the Federal Intelligence Service who had been sent to Guantanamo in September 2002. They came back with a positive assessment:
It is almost certain that Kurnaz would not pose a threat to German, American or Israeli security interests if he were released.
Assessment of the BND
In the letter to the Secretary of the Interior, Schapper, it was not long after that:
A return to the Federal Republic is apparently being sought. There is agreement between the Chancellor’s Office and the BMI (Federal Ministry of the Interior) that re-entry is not desired.
Letter dated 30. October 2002
At that time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was the head of the Federal Chancellery, while his party comrade Otto Schily headed the Ministry of the Interior. One had not prevented the Freilang, affirmed the Federal Minister of the Interior at that time now in an interview with the picture on Sunday and tries to grow in also Steinmeier of blame: "On the contrary, there have been efforts to persuade the U.S. government to release the prisoners." Security officials had had significant security concerns. The offers to freelance had not been serious: "From all I know today, this was just about vague mind games by individual intelligence officers at the working level."
Fighting over press reports
Steinmeier’s confusing information policy, meanwhile, proves that Berlin government circles are aware of their own transgressions, including not having clearly criticized Guantanamo and other camps, as well as CIA cover-ups. As the rule of law reclaims the terrain in the so-called war on terror, those who early on wanted to benefit from the U.S.’s structural human rights abuses or played along for political reasons are on the defensive. The lack of legal awareness with which the then federal government and current members of the government proceeded in the Kurnaz case could develop into one of the most serious hurdles for the coalition in the coming weeks.
So far, the government leadership is still putting itself before the Aubenminister. But the battle is being fought on a different level. Almost every day, intelligence circles are publishing new documents in daily newspapers in an attempt to cut off one side or the other. While the report in the Berliner Zeitung last Friday invalidated Steinmeier’s previous defense, a day later information emerged in the news magazine Focus according to which the German government had not been able to free Kurnaz at all.
Canada as a positive role model
The discussion of aiding and abetting U.S. human rights abuses by other governments has long since ceased to be a national discussion. An incriminating assessment by the CIA investigative committee of the European Parliament could still be dismissed by the federal government. But other states threaten to undermine Berlin’s blockade.
Late this week, Canada’s government only admitted its complicity in the abduction and torture of Maher Arar. The 36-year-old was arrested during his return to Canada from Tunisia during a stopover at New York’s Kennedy Airport in 2002. Arar was later deported to Syria, where he was innocently imprisoned and tortured for a year (beware of stopovers in the USA). Because Canadian intelligence had apparently passed false information to U.S. authorities, the victim filed suit against the Ottawa government in 2004 – and prevailed. Without a trial, Prime Minister Stephen Harper admitted the guilt of his government. The head of the secret service, Giuliano Zaccardelli, had already been forced to leave his post in December. Government pays Arar 10.5 million Canadian dollars (about 8.2 million euros). It is the highest compensation the Canadian state has ever paid to a burger. In addition, Harper apologized publicly to Arar and his family.
In Berlin, such a sense of justice has yet to take hold. In the USA, however, we are still a long way off here too. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice refused to remove Arar from the terror list at the request of the Canadian government. Stockwell Day, the Canadian Minister of Public Security, has been briefed on the alleged information regarding Arar, but has not come to any other decision as a result. U.S. Attorney General Gonzales continues to claim that the abduction of Arar to Syria was legal. The latter is filing a lawsuit against the U.S. government for the human rights violations committed by his abduction to Syria.