'Bremen Taliban' or Victim of Circumstance?

BREMEN, GERMANY -- Impersonal white post cards from Guantanamo Bay and a short letter are the only contact Rabiye Kurnaz has had with her son since he left Bremen last October on a spiritual journey to Pakistan, where he wanted to "see the Koran."

Within two months, Murat Kurnaz, 20, was turned over to U.S. soldiers near the airport in Karachi. The Americans accused Kurnaz of fighting for the Taliban and shipped him off along with the third batch of prisoners to Camp X-Ray on the southern tip of Cuba, German investigators say.

There, he and the roughly 600 other prisoners await an uncertain fate, sealed off from personal contact with their families and lawyers and living under conditions that have been criticized by human rights organizations. For Kurnaz’s family, the uncertainty is especially acute: Kurnaz, though born and raised in Germany, is a Turkish citizen and holds only resident alien status in his native country.

Photo of Murat Kurnaz, now a prisoner on Guantanamo Bay. Taken in Bremen a few years ago. (Quelle: Deutsche Welle. Online)

That detail, a holdover from old German citizenship laws that were replaced four years ago, has left Kurnaz (photo) in diplomatic limbo, giving the German government little lobbying power over Murat’s fate. Kurnaz's problems are compounded by the fact that the Turkish government has shown little interest in pressuring U.S. officials to clarify his status, said family lawyer Bernhard Docke.

Though many of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay are suspected guerilla fighters, German investigators are now expressing doubt that Kurnaz ever made it to that level. In effect, they say, Kurnaz was more of a Taliban wannabe than warrior. That leaves Kurnaz’s family wondering what sort of justice the United States is planning for their son.

"John Walker was captured in the middle of the Afghanistan war," said Rabiye Kurnaz, referring to the "American Taliban," from California captured alongside Taliban forces last winter. "What did the Americans do with him? They put him before a judge. What did they do with Murat? They just stuck him in jail. I don’t see any human rights here, do you?"

The fate of European prisoners at Camp-X Ray remains one of many sticking points in transatlantic relations one year after the terrorist attacks sparked the United States’ war on terrorism.

The U.S. government’s refusal to classify the detainees as prisoners of war has enabled it to deny suspects like Kurnaz the rights guaranteed them by the Geneva Convention. With security heightened in the wake of Sept. 11 and the war against the Taliban and al Qaida, the U.S. has refused to release information about the detainees or what charges it intends to bring against them.

The sheer lack of information makes it extraordinarily difficult to measure the suspicions surrounding Kurnaz and other Guantanamo detainees -- and it has struck a sour note with European countries whose government officials have only had limited access to the roughly 12 EU nationals in Guantanamo.

"The whole rationale of the war on terrorism is that we are upholding the rule of law, we should maintain the moral high ground," said Steven Everts, of the London-based Centre for European Reform. "The decision by the U.S. executive, not the judiciary, not to grant these people the full protection of the Geneva Convention, went against this notion the international coalition to fight terrorism was all about."

The United States government has refused to reveal details about the prisoners it is holding or the details of their capture. Nearly a year later, Kurnaz's family knows nothing about the circumstances of how he fell into the hands of U.S. soldiers near the Karachi airport last December. Kurnaz’s mother, Rabiye, has tried to launch a media offensive in the Turkish and German press to get her son’s legal situation clarified.

Early on, she wrote a letter to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. But given that Kurnaz is a Turkish citizen, Fischer's hands were tied. He could do little more than write a regretful reply, saying he was powerless but would do all he could. Her almost daily calls to the Turkish consulate in nearby Hanover and embassy in Berlin have turned up nothing.

"They keep saying they’ll take care of it, but they haven’t done a thing," she said.

Kurnaz's family and lawyer suspect the reason lies in the fact that he is more German than Turkish.

When asked whether it had taken any steps on Kurnaz's behalf, an official with the Turkish Embassy in Berlin had little to say. "No one here knows much about the case," he said.