Evidence of innocence rejected at Guantanamo

Just months after US Army troops whisked a German man from Pakistan to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, his US captors concluded that he was not a terrorist. "USA considers Murat Kurnaz's innocence to be proven," a German intelligence officer wrote that year in a memo to his colleagues. "He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks." But the 19-year-old student was not freed. Instead, over the next four years, two US military tribunals that were responsible for determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were enemy fighters declared him a dangerous al-QaIda ally who should remain in prison. The disparity between the tribunal's judgments and the intelligence community's consensus view that Kurnaz is innocent is detailed in newly released military and court documents that track his fate. His attorneys, who sued the Pentagon to gain access to the documents, say that they reflect policies that result in mistreatment of the hundreds of foreigners who have been locked up for years at the controversial prison. Lawyers for Kurnaz and other detainees argue that the panels violate the US Constitution and international law. They say that the proceedings have not provided Guantanamo Bay detainees with a fair and impartial hearing. US District Judge Joyce Hens Green, who was privy to the classified record of the tribunal's decision-making about Kurnaz in 2004, concluded in January 2005 that his treatment provided powerful evidence of bias against prisoners, and she deemed the proceedings illegal under US and international law. But her ruling, which depicted the allegations against Kurnaz as unsubstantiated and as an inappropriate basis for keeping him locked up, was mostly classified at the time. In newly released passages, however, Green's ruling reveals that the tribunal members relied heavily on a memo written by a US brigadier general who noted that Kurnaz had prayed while the US national anthem was sung in the prison and that he expressed an unusual interest in detainee transfers and the guard schedule. Other documents make clear that US intelligence officials had earlier concluded that Kurnaz, who went to Pakistan shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to visit religious sites, had simply chosen a bad time to travel. The process is "fundamentally corrupted," said Baher Azmy, a professor at Seton Hall Law School who represents Kurnaz. "All of this just reveals that they had the wrong person and they knew it." He added: "His entire file reveals he has no connection with terrorism. None. Confronted with this uncomfortable fact, the military panel makes up evidence" to justify its claim that only real terrorists are incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. Some of Kurnaz's experience -- including the existence of official documents suggesting that he was detained by mistake -- is well known. In March 2005, The Washington Post wrote about Green's decision after court officials inadvertently declassified portions of it. Kurnaz was released from Guantanamo Bay in August 2006, a few months after new German Chancellor Angela Merkel told President Bush in a private meeting that obtaining the detainee's freedom was one of her top priorities. But the text of the internal government memos exonerating Kurnaz, an Army general's memo supporting Kurnaz's continued incarceration and key portions of Green were not disclosed earlier because the US military official overseeing Guantanamo Bay argued that their release would compromise national security. German and American intelligence officers interviewed Kurnaz in September 2002, records show. They jointly concluded that nothing was linking the man from Bremen to terrorist cells or enemy fighters and that he should be freed. In a memo dated May 19, 2003, the commanding general of the Criminal Investigation Task Force, a Pentagon intelligence unit that interrogates detainees and collects evidence about them, wrote that "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of al-Qaida. CITF is not aware of any evidence that Kurnaz may have aided or abetted, or conspired to commit acts of terrorism." In a previously classified passage of her ruling, Green said the panel ignored "conflicting exculpatory evidence in at least three separate documents," thereby raising questions about its impartiality. The only solid information in Kurnaz's file showed that the CIA, US military intelligence and German intelligence found nothing linking him to terrorist groups, she said.