In the Wrong Place for a Long Time

[Snazzy]

In the Wrong Place for a Long Time


My name is Murat Kurnaz. I am twenty-seven years old. I was born and raised in Germany. Recently, I got married to a kind young woman from a good family, which makes me happy. We rented a nice flat in the Turkish section of my hometown of Bremen, Germany. My life now appears to be hopeful, even normal. But before all of this, from the age of nineteen to twenty-four, I spent five years of my life as a prisoner (or, I often think, as a victim) in American torture camps in Kandahar and Guantánamo Bay.

...


Extraordinary Rendition
Toward the end of my travels in Pakistan, I was on a civilian bus, full of regular Pakistani men and women, headed for the airport to return home to Bremen. At a routine checkpoint, a Pakistani guard pulled me off the bus to ask me questions — he may have thought I was suspicious because of my Western appearance. Next thing I knew, I was in Pakistani detention for weeks; I was interrogated repeatedly, and told them over and over my story. It didn’t matter; they held me hostage and eventually turned me over to the Americans. I remember very well the first question American interrogators asked me: "Have you seen Osama bin Laden?" I answered "Yes"— like everyone else, I had seen him on TV and in the newspapers. But I live in Germany. Of course I’ve never seen him in the flesh.

The Americans shackled and hooded me (the first of hundreds of times this was done to me) and flew me to the American base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. I later learned from my American interrogator that they paid the Pakistani police a bounty of only $3,000 for me. This was a cheap price. I know many detainees who were sold to the Americans for bounties. The Americans dropped flyers all over Afghanistan offering lots of money for this. I heard recently that the president of Pakistan wrote a book bragging that he had received almost $300 million from Americans to turn over suspects.

...

Crime and Punishment
I always knew I had done nothing wrong. But it has now been proven not only that I’m innocent but that both the U.S. government and the German government knew it all along. In fact, they had discussed my innocence as early as the fall of 2002. The U.S. government asked the Germans if they would take me back, and the Germans said no. They left me to rot in this horrible place for an additional three years. I think that I was eventually released because of the work of my lawyers in the U.S. and in Germany, who proved to the German public that I was innocent and to pressure the new German government to negotiate for my release. If there had been any law in Guantánamo, I would have been released much earlier. Instead, the U.S. just called me an enemy combatant and said I had no rights. I believe my story, with some variations, is true for many others still in Guantánamo.

...

I might expect a system like Guantánamo to be developed by a poor, tyrannical, or ignorant country. I never would have imagined it would be created by the United States of America. In Germany, we believe that leaders who commit illegal acts must be punished. Is this not what happens in a democracy?

http://blog.aclu.org/2009/06/29/in-the-wrong-place-for-a-long-time/

http://www.washingtonspectator.org/message.cfm?msg=0notsubs1&CGI_script_name=/articles/20090601letterfrombremen.cfm&PageName=%2Farticles%2F20090601letterfrombremen.cfm

[bertman]

1. Every American needs to read this, or have it read to them.

Recommend.