Germany: Guantánamo detainee Murat Kurnaz and the politics of the SPD

Murnat Kurnaz, who grew up in the German city of Bremen, was detained and abused for four years at the US detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. His treatment and the handling of his case by leading SPD politicians reveal a frightening disdain for democratic principles. For the SPD, such constitutionally protected rights as the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus and prohibitions against physical and mental abuse are meaningless.

In this regard, their attitude differs only by degree, but not in principle, from that of the Bush administration, which in the name of the “war against terrorism” has kidnapped, abducted, abused, tortured and “disappeared” suspects all over the world.

It has now been clearly established that up to its last days in office, the SPD-Green Party government used every trick at its disposal to prevent the release of Kurnaz from Guantánamo and his return to Germany—this despite the fact that he was being kept under conditions amounting to torture and that his innocence was well known. There was no evidence to incriminate him, and an American court had attested to his innocence. German officials who had interviewed him in Guantánamo in 2002 were also convinced of his innocence.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/spd-f06.shtml