Exclusive: Inside Gitmo with Detainee 061
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A WEEK AFTER HIS tribunal, Kurnaz received a visit from a balding thirtysomething man with wire-rimmed glasses who handed him a piece of paper with a handwritten note on it. It read, "My dear son, it's me, your mother. I hope you're doing well. This man is Baher Azmy. You can trust him. He's your lawyer."
In the three years he had been at Guantanamo, this was the first word Kurnaz had heard from his family. Afraid that the letter would be taken from him, he crumpled it up and stuffed it under his shirt.
Azmy also delivered a second piece of news: He had filed suit against the Bush administration on Kurnaz's behalf.
Three months later, in January 2005, U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green delivered a ruling on Kurnaz's claim, and those of 62 other prisoners, challenging the legality of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. Finding that the tribunals were illegal, she used Kurnaz's case to illustrate the "fundamental unfairness" of the system, particularly its reliance on "classified information not disclosed to the detainees." (Most of the passages of the ruling dealing with his case were themselves classified until recently, though they were briefly released through a Pentagon slipup and reported by the Washington Post in March 2005.) Green also argued that the tribunal's choice to ignore evidence of Kurnaz's innocence was among the strongest signs that the tribunals were stacked against detainees.
But in the end the ruling was just one salvo in an ongoing legal struggle over whether detainees can plead their cases in U.S. courts and had little impact on Kurnaz's situation. In early November 2005, when the Administrative Review Board (ARB), which conducts annual reviews of detainees' status, took up his case again, it voted unanimously to uphold his designation as an enemy combatant. According to internal Pentagon emails obtained by Mother Jones, the board failed to weigh evidence submitted by Kurnaz's lawyers, including a notarized affidavit from Bilgin, which showed that a central charge against the detainee—his alleged association with a suicide bomber—was verifiably false.
Around this time, the tides began to turn on the other side of the Atlantic. German media had gotten wind of their government's role in Kurnaz's continued detention, and scandal was brewing. Politicians who had pushed to keep him out of the country were suddenly scrambling to distance themselves from the decision.
Then, in late November, Angela Merkel took over as German chancellor. Though a friend of the Bush administration, she has made no bones about her opposition to the indefinite detentions at Guantanamo. During her first visits to the Oval Office, in January 2006, she pressed President George W. Bush on Kurnaz's case, the first in a string of negotiations over his fate. In June of that year, the Administrative Review Board reconvened and decided that, after nearly five years of imprisonment, detainee 061 was no longer an enemy combatant.
ON AUGUST 24, 2006, a C-17 cargo plane touched down at Ramstein Air Base, a U.S. military installation 44 miles southwest of Frankfurt. Shackled to the floor in its cargo hold was detainee 061, his face wrapped in a mask and his eyes covered by goggles with blacked-out lenses. Standing watch over him were 15 American soldiers.
On the tarmac, he was handed over to German police, who asked that his handcuffs be removed. Then they escorted him to a nearby Red Cross installation, where his family was waiting.
The reunion was bittersweet: His mother couldn't stop crying, and his father was so withered and gray that at first Kurnaz mistook him for an older uncle. During the car ride home, a journey of more than 250 miles, Kurnaz learned that his wife, Fatima—the reason he says he traveled to Pakistan—had filed for divorce. All those years with no word from him were more than she could handle. Later in the trip, his father pulled over at a rest stop and his mother poured him some coffee from a thermos in the trunk. Kurnaz was so busy marveling at the stars, which had been drowned out by the floodlights at Guantanamo, that he forgot to drink it.
Kurnaz's homecoming created a clamor in Germany. By early 2007, the widening scandal was threatening to topple Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who as head of the Chancellery under the previous administration was the highest official to formally approve the plan blocking Kurnaz's return. Around the same time, a special investigative committee of German Parliament began probing Berlin's role in Kurnaz's continued detention. The ongoing inquiry has hit some stumbling blocks: CIA transcripts related to the case vanished, and an electronic data system with vital intelligence information was mysteriously erased.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the legality of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, Kurnaz's ordeal is emerging as a key exhibit. Attorney Seth Waxman, who delivered oral arguments on detainees' behalf last December, wrapped up his comments by recounting the salient details of Kurnaz's case—a move intended to drive home his claim that the tribunals are an "inadequate substitute" for due process. A decision in the case is expected early this summer.
A reluctant political figure, Kurnaz has done his best to stay out of the fray, turning instead to his old interests. Germany's domestic intelligence agency, which kept tabs on him after his return, found only one item of note—that he had bought a motorcycle. (He has since shaved off his beard in favor of a biker mustache, started lifting weights again, and bought a cherry-colored Mazda RX-8 with double spoilers, custom alloy wheels, and black-and-red racing seats.) He has also written a memoir, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, which came out in Germany last year. An English version, with a foreword by rocker Patti Smith, is scheduled to be released in the United States in April, and a movie deal is already in the works. The television newsmagazine 60 Minutes has negotiated an interview exclusive timed to correspond with the book's release. (Kurnaz declined to be interviewed for this story because of that arrangement.)
A plainspoken account, Five Years of My Life focuses on the daily humiliations and surreal texture of life at Guantanamo, a place where iguanas roam the cell blocks and trials take place in the same rooms as interrogations. In the closing pages, Kurnaz explains why he chose to speak out. "It's important that our stories are told," he writes. "We need to counter the endless [official] reports written in Guantanamo itself. We have to speak up and say: I tried to hand back my blanket and got four weeks in solitary confinement." But Kurnaz doesn't dwell on his own suffering. Instead he turns the spotlight on the plight of other detainees, including the ones who are still being held. "While I sit here eating chocolate bars and peeling mandarin oranges, they are being beaten and starved," he writes. "I can eat, drink and sleep much the same as I did five years ago, but I never forget that people are being abused in Cuba."
Click here for a timeline of Kurnaz's case.
Photo: Henning Schacht/Action Press/ZUMA Press
will be disappeared. A plague on the jerks who participated in these acts.
No, it is not OK to torture. The threat from within is far greater than the threat from "terrorist". Our government officials are the ones we need to keep our eyes on.
Yeah, it sounds good. War on Terror!!! Just like the War on Poverty, and the War on Drugs.
These wars are really profitable for some people.
I think we should have a war on people who care more about NASCAR than they do about liberty. Wake up people before it is too late.
Thank you Mother Jones. You have been fighting for a long time and I appreciate it.
How do we know Okame isn't an enemy combatant? How can he prove he isn't?
So you'd have us believe, would you, that being held for four years, for friggin NOTHING you ever did, isn't torture? Kept in solitary, paraded in leg- and handcuffs, by three MP's, down to the hearing room every couple of weeks, for another tribunal "review," that never can quite see that you don't belong there?
That isn't torture?
-----
kill your Faux "noose" channel.
Who gives a shiite what other citizens think of America!
Really, WHO GIVES A SHIITE? F.U.C.K. 'EM Ustah! Most of them are gonna hate us anyway, and if they're Islamic, they want to slit our throats regardless of what we do to appease them. Wise up, dumbazz.
And Katie is right - you people are a bunch of pansies! I think part of the problem is arm-chair-quarterbacking. You bunch of pissing, whining pansies have never been out in the rest of the world to see first hand what it's really like. Instead you rely on crap that is regurgitated here, or at the Daily Kos, or by Pig Woman Rosie O for your "knowledge". Get off the fuc-kin' computer, get a passport/join the Peace Corps/join the military and go out to see some of the shiiteholes of the world and what the US is doing to better their situations, instead of bashing your own fuc-kin' country first and foremost.
What a bunch of elite, socialistic losers.
Nice speech. Well written, calm, and insightful to the liberal mind. I take it you're on the squad of left wing arm-chair-quarterbacks who would rather sit back in the cushy confines of the safe, prosperous society that this nation provides, and berate that very nation rather than support or defend it against its enemies. Sure, you'll attend some bullshiite demonstration or rally and feel you're doing your part, but really. It's all just take, take, take for you folks. How do you live with yourselves?
I don't know if Mother Jones is a news web site as you state, or a commentary web site, since the "news" as they report it is obviously slanted, which is not a hallmark of news journalism. But I digress.
I do enjoy (to an extent) occasionally reading the whining and ranting of liberals - it lets me stay abreast of the mindset of those who wish to tear down our own country rather than defend it. I don't think I'll ever understand or agree with your positions, but it's an interesting read. (By the way, many of our Islamic enemies are now here within our own borders, many living as legal residents with millions of dollars coming in from the Saudis to support them, their schools, and mosques here in the US. That's not paranoia or Kool-Aid talking, just facts uncovered during a little research into Islam, the religion/way-of-life that commands its followers to slit the throat of Kefirs, Infidels, Unbelievers... Americans. But I suppose you don't have a problem with that... I'm sure you think that's America's fault too. Again I digress - that's another topic and argument for another day).
I have to wonder ma, since you don't watch TV, how do you know that, quote: "there is too much propaganda and garbage in it, like the constant lies and propaganda on the Fox News network, where most RW Bush worshipers get their misinformation, fear and hate... Bill Ocrazy should be charged with inciting hate crimes, he has incited many unbalanced angry racists to attack muslims and immigrants..." You get all that information without even watching the show? Interesting. Are you a sheep that just follows along with what others write about Fox/O'Reilly on the left wing hate sites? Being a Huffington Post adict doesn't seem like a good way to become informed and enlightened ma - you should know better. Personally, I can't stand most of the anchors on MSNBC anymore, so obviously twisted and slanted are their views and reporting. But, I watch them occasionally to get "the other perspective". (And having done so, I am amazed they can get away with such unabashed hate speech and outright slanted "journalism" and favoritism. But hey, they're on cable and they have the First Amendment, so I won't begrudge them their right. I just feel sorry for the saps who only watch that drivel and believe it is the true news.
When you say, "In war the old mentally balanced US always officially, followed the Geneva Convention, which sets humane reasonable rules for the treatment of prisoners of war...This was set up, so our own soldiers who were prisoners had a chance to survive the prison camps. In the middle east, no American soldier will have a chance if captured by enemies..They do have a chance of being tortured to death by very revengeful and angry radical terrorist types.." You sort of answer your own statement. Countries abide by Geneva Convention rules regarding POWs in hopes that enemies will treat captured soldiers in a likewise humane fashion. Obviously the North Vietnamese blew that theory out the window, with their incredible physical torture of our GIs. And the terrorists who capture our troops today would rather videotape their torture and decapitation than abide by any silly rules of war. Besides, no terrorist organization has ratified or signed the Geneva Convention rules, so in theory, we don't have to comply when we capture their fighters. However, the US Supreme Court did rule that we will provide at least the minimum of POW human rights to them, so we do. Do you know that there are Governors in the US who have visited Guantanamo Bay and commented afterward that the terrorists/enemy combatants being held there have it better than American citizen prisoners in many of our stateside prisons? Interesting eh? I wouldn't feel too sorry for captured terrorists, especially in light of the fact that they want to kill you personally, ma.
I love this... "the division between radical fascist, greedy, war monging right wingers and normal educated people who can think for themselves,is huge..." So in your eyes, left wing liberals are normal and educated, and can think for themselves, while the rest of us are knuckle-draggers bent on war, destruction and harboring our millions in blood money. Again, interesting insight into the liberal mind. Did you know that there are more "rich" Democrats in the US than rich Republicans? Not a big deal, but a fact that might not mesh with your ideas on greed.
"Bush and Gang deliberately misled, and lied about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he could attack the country and occupy Iraq for profit, oil, and power..." Your inanity keeps me chuckling ma! So you mean to tell me that the FBI, CIA, British Intel, and Saddam's own Generals all were convinced that Saddam had WMDs, but it's Bush's fault and Bush misled the world? Don't you remember Saddam using nerve gas to kill Iraqi Kurds? And the UN passed 17 resolutions against Iraq/Saddam, pressuring him to come clean and let the inspectors do their job, but all were rejected. We went through 12 years of rejected diplomacy and resolutions before we took action, all the while Iraqi men, women and children were being tortured, raped, and killed by this madman while he maintained the means to transfer these WMDs to terrorists for use against the US. So, how much longer would you have waited to take action? (silly question, you're an arm-chair-quarterback who doesn't take action!) Tell me ma, how much profit, oil, and power are we getting out of this? Do you have an Iraqi oil pipeline coming through your neighborhood? Where was it ever in the plans to get any of the above? Or are you being a hate-site sheep again?
Just a couple final thoughts to try to correct your regurgitated liberal babble. (you really need to gather your own identity and integrity, and stop being such a tool for the left wing haters ma)
More Iraqis have been killed by Muslims/Islamists than by Americans. Stop your unfounded berating of America's military.
You say; "we have a new angry population of terrorist, who hate the crazy murdering invaders called Americans,... Bush and gang has made all Americans targets of hate,"
Well, let's see how things stack up ma. Shall we start with one of your heroes, Jimmy Carter? The Iranian militants captured the US Embassy and 70 Americans, holding them captive for 444 days – that’s over a year for the mathematically challenged liberals out there. Carter never did get them released… it took a strong willed conservative to get the job done. Then another of your heroes, Bill no-respect-for-women Clinton had the following take place under his watch: The World Trade Center bombing in 1993 (by another raghead group led by that blind shiek); the bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 American Sailors while it was sat peacefully in a Yemeni port; the Khobar Towers got blown up in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 American military and wounded 372; two American Embassies got blown to smithereens at the same time in Africa and killed over 200 people; and of course, all the planning and staging for 19 homocide bombers who flew fully-fueled aircraft filled with people into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon soon after Bush took the reins from Clinton. Have you already forgotten? So how are your liberal heroes doing at protecting America ma?
Also, on more than one occasion, Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden, but he turned it down! The Sudanese government was going to hand OBL over to Clinton! And now the lunatic left blames Bush for not finding OBL in the high country of Afghanistan & Pakistan?!? Give me a break!
Can you enlighten me on this statement, as I AM VERY INTERESTED IN YOUR REPLY TO THIS: “We have watched our rights being taken away from us, we are no longer safe from harm by our own government...” Tell me ma, how have YOUR rights been altered? How has YOUR life been changed by your big, scary government? Me personally, I haven’t noticed one single change – not one! My life has not been affected one iota… but then again, I’m not a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer! I don't call terrorists overseas or donate to their causes. How about you, ma? Hell, I’ve even travelled into Muslim countries since Bush has been in office (But, I still don't trust the Islamists who are driven to kill all non-Muslims).
Start thinking for yourself ma - don't be a tool of radical left.
(MOST OF THE WORLD KNOWS MORE ABOUT
AMERICAN MISCONDUCT THAN WE DO.)
The article does not go into details,
which involve details of torture like
amputation of fingers of craftsmen,
beating a kid whose legs they cut off
and would not treat,
electro-shock,
poisoning,
beatings of the handicapped & elderly
(the oldest prisoner was about
90 years old)
etc...
Murat (and others)
they knew were innocent
(even the camp commandant said
most of their prisoners were innocent,
farmers living near the border
and farmers whose lands other farmers
(from other tribes) coveted, etc...
They were held and tortured
with the intention of never
releasing any of them,
partly because they knew most of them
were innocent, and they did not want to
admit they were wrong (GUILTY).
The people quoted below are
clearly reminiscent of Nazis:
Responding to
SATAN, the April Fool,
& other such slime
quoted below:
"a patriotic Nazi must do his duty and torture perverts everywhere. -SATAN
So what is the problem?? ...
This is the normal routine,
not any special punishment...
OH GROW UP ALL OF YOU PANSIES.
THIS IS THE REAL WORLD
AND THERE ARE REAL TERRORISTS OUT THERE
AND THEY WANT TO KILL AS MANY AMERICANS
PLUS THEMSELVES AS THEY CAN.
SO WHAT IF ONE GUY WAS INNOCENT.
I'D RATHER WE TORTURED
AND IMPRISONED ONE INNOCENT MAN
THAT SEE 3000 MORE AMERICANS DIE,
UNLESS IT WAS 3000 MORE IDIOTS
LIKE MOST OF YOU.
Posted by: KATIE April 1, 2008 8:34:13
Who gives a shiite what other citizens think of America!
Really, WHO GIVES A SHIITE? F.U.C.K. 'EM..."
*****************
The people quoted above are
clearly reminiscent of Nazis.
Responding to
SATAN, the April Fool,
& other such slime
quoted above:
READ THE BOOK BY MURAT KURNAZ
(MOST OF THE WORLD KNOWS MORE ABOUT
AMERICAN MISCONDUCT THAN WE DO.)
The article does not go into details,
which involve details of torture like
amputation of fingers of craftsmen,
beating a kid whose legs they cut off
and would not treat,
electro-shock,
poisoning,
beatings of the handicapped & elderly
(the oldest prisoner was about
90 years old)
etc...
Murat (and others)
they knew were innocent
(even the camp commandant said
most of their prisoners were innocent,
farmers living near the border
and farmers whose lands other farmers
(from other tribes) coveted, etc...
They were held and tortured
with the intention of never
releasing any of them,
partly because they knew most of them
were innocent, and they did not want to
admit they were wrong (GUILTY).
That fight is not necessarily fought with guns as most of the disillusioned right wing conservatives like the above posters tend to think.
However tempting to wish the loss of liberty and unjust prosecution on the above idiots, I will not. Ignorance is bliss, but then most of them are probably ignorant 12 year olds, or even worse grown insecure men with the mental acuity of a 12 year old. Either way they are the one's stuck having to live with themselves and the resulting dark view and olfactory tribulation that could only come from having their head lodged that far up their arse.