Murat Kurnaz

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Murat Kurnaz (born March 19, 1982 in Bremen ) is a Turkish citizen born and raised in Germany who was held in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base prison camp from January 2002 to August 2006 without charge .

Murat Kurnaz (2011)

He described this in his autobiography Five Years of My Life , which was filmed in 2013 .

Life

Education, orientation to Islam

Kurnaz graduated from secondary school in Bremen and then began training as a shipbuilder . In the summer of 2001, Kurnaz married in Turkey. The marriage was divorced during his imprisonment, which he reportedly only found out on his journey home to Germany.

In autumn 2001 he began to orientate himself increasingly towards Islam, grew a beard and regularly visited the Abu Bakr Mosque in Bremen-Mitte. There he got in touch with the Sunni Orthodox organization " Tablighi Jamaat ".

A few weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001 , on October 3, 2001, Kurnaz flew from Frankfurt to Karachi ( Pakistan ) at the age of 19 , and - according to his testimony to the investigative committee - more in the mosques of the "Tablighi Jamaat" to learn about the Koran until his wife comes to Germany from Turkey in December.

Arrested and interned in Guantanamo Bay

In Pakistan, Kurnaz was arrested by the Pakistani police in November 2001 during a routine check, from them to the Pakistani military and finally to the US armed forces in Afghanistan at the end of November for a bounty of $ 3,000 , which initially handed him over to a US air force base Detained in a makeshift open-air prison camp in the Kandahar war zone.

Prisoners upon arrival at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base Detention Center in January 2002

Kurnaz was classified as an "enemy fighter" and in January 2002 he was transferred from Afghanistan to the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba. He was one of the first prisoners in the camp that had opened a few weeks earlier.

Kurnaz himself claims to have been tortured repeatedly while incarcerated in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, including beatings, forced sleep deprivation and waterboarding- like practices.

Return to Germany

After being released from almost five years of internment, he returned to Germany on August 24, 2006. Since then, Kurnaz has repeatedly raised serious accusations against the German government in the media . He claimed that he was mistreated in Afghanistan by members of the Bundeswehr Special Forces Command at the end of 2001 . His lawyer accused the Schröder government of having thwarted an earlier release of Kurnaz in 2002. Kurnaz also reported severe physical and psychological abuse by US soldiers in Afghanistan and Cuba.

Kurnaz has lived in Bremen since his return to Germany. He is married for the second time and has two children. In 2007 he published his autobiographical account Five Years of My Life. A report from Guantánamo , which was filmed as Five Years of Life in 2013. He campaigned for the release of Younous Chekkouri, who had been detained in Guantánamo since 2002. Kurnaz has appeared at Amnesty International events and has been working as a trainer and supervisor in refugee shelters since the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015/2016 . In October 2016, Kurnaz took part in a "World Meeting" of the rocker-like group Ottoman Germania Boxclub in Dietzenbach, Hesse, and then declined the offer to work. The association and its sub-organizations were banned in Germany in July 2018.

His book has been translated into over 12 languages. In lectures and articles he advocates integration and belief in people.

The Murat Kurnaz case

Reasons for arrest

Murat Kurnaz was in the immediate vicinity of Selçuk Bilgin, whose parents accused him of wanting to fight against the United States in Afghanistan . This fact led to a review of the entire area around Bilgin. Evidence of his involvement in violence has not been produced.

Kurnaz was classified as an " unlawful combatant ". This term was introduced by George W. Bush in the so-called " war on terror " and serves as a justification to deny the detainees their rights in the preliminary investigation and to torture them, since the term is neither in the international martial law nor in the Geneva Convention III on treatment of prisoners of war there. For example, the prisoners were not allowed to hire a lawyer to defend them, to speak to a lawyer alone, or to see their relatives. When her trial would be in a US military court was uncertain.

His lawyer Bernhard Docke , along with the lawyers of other released Guantánamo prisoners, sued a US federal court . The responsible judge Joyce Hens Green ruled on January 31, 2005 that Kurnaz's classification as an “unlawful combatant” was unfounded and that his detention was therefore illegal. The judge, who had access to Kurnaz's entire prison record, including non-disclosure information, found there was no evidence that Kurnaz had any ties to al-Qaeda or posed a particular threat to the United States. On February 9, 2011, the US government appealed the ruling.

The Federal Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice referred the proceedings against Kurnaz back to the Bremen Public Prosecutor's Office on suspicion of the formation of a criminal organization . The Federal Prosecutor General declared that he was not responsible because, after examining the investigation files, he came to the conclusion that there was insufficient initial suspicion of the formation of a criminal organization . In 2002, the Bremen public prosecutor closed the investigation against the two other suspects (Selcuk B. and Ali M.) for lack of sufficient suspicion. Against Kurnaz and the accused Sofyen B.-A. the proceedings were initially suspended because they could not express themselves personally. On October 17, 2006 the public prosecutor's office in Bremen announced that the proceedings against Kurnaz had now also been dropped.

The role of the German and Turkish governments

Since January 2002, the German government had been informed about the capture of the Turkish citizen Kurnaz and worked closely with the American security services. As early as January 2002, she was offered the opportunity to be questioned. Attempts by the Foreign Office to look after Kurnaz consularly were rejected by the American side with reference to his Turkish citizenship . According to Art. 5 lit. a and e of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations , it is the task of the respective home states to protect the interests of their citizens abroad and to provide them with help and assistance. Since Turkey was appointed in this regard, the rejection of the German consular activity does not raise any concerns under public law. The Turkish government at the time did not intervene in favor of Kurnaz.

German investigative findings were informally transmitted to the Americans for the US interrogations in Guantánamo. Finally, in September 2002 two employees of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and an employee of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) flew to Guantánamo for interrogation together with a CIA employee. The BfV employee had previously been prepared for the interrogation in Bremen, and there were also question lists from the BKA and LKA.

According to the German interrogating officers, Kurnaz was never active as a terrorist, only in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since the US authorities shared this view, the United States is said to have offered Kurnaz's return to Germany shortly afterwards. The German authorities, however, had advocated deportation to Turkey, but not to Germany. As a result, the United States withdrew its offer, although the then Secretary of State Joschka Fischer personally intervened in the US State Department for his release. According to the US special envoy and Guantánamo representative Pierre-Richard Prosper , Kurnaz had been scheduled for release since 2002, which the German government was or should have known.

The then Senator for the Interior of Bremen, Thomas Röwekamp , announced in 2004 that Kurnaz would not be allowed to return to Germany after his release, as his permanent residence permit had expired because he had been abroad for more than six months. Kurnaz failed to apply for the extension of the re-entry period required in such cases. This was the original conclusion reached by a dossier from the head of department responsible at the time in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Hans-Georg Maaßen , which years later became the main subject of the investigation committee set up for this purpose in the political processing of the Kurnaz case. The administrative court in Bremen ruled in November 2005 that the residence permit was still valid because Kurnaz did not have the opportunity to obtain the otherwise required permit for a longer absence without losing the right of residence in good time.

Committees of inquiry

The Kurnaz case occupied two parliamentary committees of inquiry . The Defense Committee investigated whether members of the Special Forces Command had mistreated Kurnaz in Afghanistan. The so-called BND committee of inquiry examined whether Kurnaz could not have been released in 2002. The expanded mandate determined, among other things, the investigation "which efforts were made in the Murat Kurnaz case by the federal government to provide Murat Kurnaz with assistance and to obtain his release".

The CIA special committee of the European Parliament stated in its final report of January 2007 that the German federal government had turned down an offer from the United States to release Kurnaz in 2002. This happened even though the intelligence services of both states were convinced of his innocence. According to press reports, the then head of the Federal Chancellery and agent for the intelligence services, Frank-Walter Steinmeier , was jointly responsible for the decision . Steinmeier denied these allegations in 2007: There was no official reliable offer from the United States and there was no connection between the decision not to allow Kurnaz to enter the Federal Republic on suspicion of terrorism and his long imprisonment in Guantánamo. In January 2007, he said: “I wouldn't make a different decision today” and “You just have to imagine what would happen if there had been an attack, and afterwards it turned out that we could have prevented it”.

On March 1, 2007 there was a scandal in the BND investigative committee because important files on the Kurnaz case had disappeared. These were those documents from the Bremen Office for the Protection of the Constitution , which, in the opinion of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Government at the time, showed that Kurnaz nevertheless represented a security risk - in contrast to the assessment of the BND employees who had interrogated him in Guantánamo . The further interrogations were postponed.

After completing its investigation into the Kurnaz case on September 18, 2008, the Defense Committee came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of abuse by members of the Bundeswehr's elite unit. The allegations could not be rejected for lack of evidence.

In its final report of June 18, 2009, the BND committee stated that there had been no misconduct by the German authorities in the Kurnaz case. In July 2009 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the restriction of the committee of inquiry with limited access to files and permission to give evidence violated the Basic Law.

reception

Navid Kermani said in 2007 that the German authorities had acted racially in the Kurnaz case and that Kurnaz's appearance after his imprisonment - “that incredible beard, longer and curlier than the beard of ... Bin Laden ” - made it difficult for him to be sympathetic to the German public. In such a case, however, the rule of law must ensure equal treatment for the benefit of all residents and for its own protection: "We are Murat Kurnaz". Kurnaz's story was processed by John le Carré in his spy thriller Marionettes . Arte showed a documentary on the Kurnaz case. His autobiography, which also appeared in translations in Turkey, France and the United States, was filmed in 2013 under the title 5 Years of Life by Stefan Schaller ; Kurnaz was portrayed by Sascha Alexander Gersak .

Fonts

Web links

Commons : Murat Kurnaz  - collection of images, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: Murat Kurnaz  - on the news

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Investigation against Murat Kurnaz stopped. In: Spiegel Online , October 17, 2006.
  2. ↑ On the background as a whole Joachim Peter: Kurnaz case: Strange story of the near-state enemy. In: Die Welt , February 16, 2007.
  3. ↑ Florian Klenk : Back from Guantanamo. In: Zeit Online , August 24, 2006.
  4. ↑ Reinhold Beckmann : Murat Kurnaz - Njemac zatvorenik Gvantanama 5 godina. ( Bosnian for “German prisoner Guantanamo 5 years”.) Video of the Beckmann episode with Bosnian subtitles shortly after Kurnaz's release; to the bounty amount from about 14:40 minutes. 2006, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Tilo Jung : Murat Kurnaz on torture & Guantanamo. Jung & Naiv : Episode 216 (Interview). December 14, 2014, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  6. ^ A b John Goetz , Britta Sandberg : The Guantanamo File on Germany's Murat Kurnaz. In: Spiegel Online , April 27, 2011 (English).
  7. ↑ Murat Kurnaz: Notes From a Guantanamo Survivor. In: The New York Times , January 7, 2012 (English).
  8. ^ "Bremer Taliban": Kurnaz back home. In: Spiegel Online , August 25, 2006.
  9. ↑ Thomas Gehringer: Murat Kurnaz in Guantánamo: Five Years of Qual. In: Der Tagesspiegel , February 6, 2015.
  10. ↑ Damir Fras: Report from the cage. In: Berliner Zeitung , April 20, 2007 (with some text excerpts from Five Years of My Life ).
  11. ↑ Murat Kurnaz: My friend in Guantánamo. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 27, 2014.
  12. ↑ Eckhard Stengel: Murat Kurnaz: "Steinmeier stole many years of my life from me". In: Badische Zeitung , August 20, 2016.
  13. ↑ Oliver Das Gupta: Murat Kurnaz - for refugees he is a piece of Germany. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 29, 2016.
  14. ↑ Turkish rockers wanted to recruit ex-Guantánamo prisoners. In: TZ. March 6, 2017. Retrieved June 8, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Ottoman Germania: Rocker group wanted to recruit Murat Kurnaz. In: TZ. March 8, 2017. Retrieved June 8, 2017 .
  16. ^ Ban on "Ottoman Germania BC" In: Tagesschau , July 10, 2018
  17. ↑ 'murat kurnaz five years of my life' . worldcat.org. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
  18. ↑ Murat Kurnaz: You have every chance! In: Zeit Online. Die Zeit , October 11, 2017, accessed on December 4, 2019 .
  19. Jump up ↑ Five Years of Guantánamo: A Chronology. In: Amnesty international , January 2007 (PDF). ( Memento of October 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ Florian Klenk : Release prevented. In: Die Zeit , April 27, 2006.
  21. ^ Veit Medick : Head of Unit Merciless. In: Spiegel Online , July 18, 2012.
  22. ↑ Judgment of November 30, 2005, file number 4 K 1013/05 ( information, judgment ).
  23. ↑ Investigation order on Bundestag.de, PDF ( Memento from February 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  24. ↑ Final report (PDF; 599 kB) of the CIA special committee of the European Parliament, page 17 No. 84.
  25. ^ Peter Stützle: Kurnaz case: What did Frank-Walter Steinmeier know? In: Deutsche Welle , December 13, 2006; Berlin refused to release Kurnaz. In: Deutsche Welle , January 24, 2007.
  26. ↑ The Kurnaz case: Steinmeier would make that decision again. In: Spiegel Online , January 27, 2007.
  27. ^ Katharina Schuler: Scandal in the committee. In: Die Zeit 10/2007.
  28. ↑ Investigations in the Kurnaz case ended. In: German Bundestag. September 19, 2008, archived from the original on September 21, 2008 ; Retrieved February 2, 2009 .
  29. ^ Final report of the Bundestag committee of inquiry from June 18, 2009, Bundestag printed matter 16/13400, pp. 361 to 376 (PDF; 13 MB).
  30. ↑ Judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court: Government violated the Basic Law in the BND case. In: Spiegel Online , July 23, 2009.
  31. ↑ Navid Kermani : "We are Murat Kurnaz". In: Die Tageszeitung , March 29, 2007. The text is a chapter of his 2009 book “Who is we”, Andreas Fahrmeir : Review by: Navid Kermani: Who is we? Germany and its Muslims, Munich: CHBeck 2009. In: Sehepunkte . Volume 9, 2009, No. 7/8, July 15, 2009.
  32. ↑ Nicolas Richter : The Metamorphosis of Murat Kurnaz. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 17, 2010.
  33. ^ Hauke ​​Friederichs: Film "5 Years of Life": 1,725 ​​days of Guantánamo. In: Zeit Online , May 24, 2013.
  34. ↑ Uli Rauss, Oliver Schröm: Murat Kurnaz: "Five years of my life". In: Stern.de , April 20, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Kurnaz, Murat
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish citizen; imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (2002–2006)
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1982
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen , Germany