UNITED STATES: Murat Kurnaz tells Mary Fitzgerald, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, why Guantánamo has to be exposed but can't simply be shut down.
AS PRISONER Number 61, Murat Kurnaz saw out the last of his teenage years in Guantánamo Bay. Nineteen years old when he arrived, the German-born Muslim was one of the first detainees held at the newly constructed camp.
He would spend five years at Guantánamo even though US military intelligence had largely concluded that there was no evidence linking him to terrorism.
In Ireland to publicise his book, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo, Murat tells the story of how he vanished into a shadowy world of secret prisons and clandestine justice systems before being released in 2006.
The son of Turkish immigrants who lived in Bremen, Murat travelled to Pakistan shortly after 9/11, telling his mother he wanted to "see and live the Koran". He had become increasingly devout after meeting members of Tablighi Jamaat, a transnational missionary movement that promotes an austere interpretation of Islam, in Germany. Tablighi Jamaat is an avowedly apolitical organisation but some intelligence agencies claim it may act as a conduit to further radicalisation.
Kurnaz says he was on his way to the airport to take a flight back to Germany when he was pulled off a bus by Pakistani police in late 2001. He was subsequently turned over to US forces and transported to a military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Kurnaz says his interrogators regularly beat him, left him chained up for days, and subjected him to electric shocks. He also says he endured a form of waterboarding, which involved having his head forced into a bucket filled with water.
In January 2002 he was flown to Guantánamo Bay, where he says he was kept in solitary confinement and subjected to daily interrogations, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and sexual humiliation.
"I can remember everything," he says. "The worst thing was not the physical torture but the fact of not having contact with the outside world for five years. They did not let me write letters or make phone calls - nothing. During these five years my best friend got sick and died, and my wife decided to divorce me, but I knew nothing of any of this until I got out."
The evidence against Murat was mostly circumstantial, such as the fact he had flown to Pakistan so soon after the 9/11 attacks and had associated with Tablighi Jamaat. US military prosecutors also alleged one of Murat's friends was a suicide bomber, but the friend was found alive and well in Germany. Declassified documents show that six months after Murat arrived at Guantánamo, US military intelligence wrote that it had "no definite link [or] evidence of detainee having an association with al-Qaeda or making any specific threat toward the US".
Now back in Germany, Murat says he wants to move on with his life. "I'm not angry . . . If I got angry, it would not change anything. I lost five years of my life and I can't afford to lose any more."
In the closing pages of his book, which became a bestseller in Germany, Murat 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 Guantánamo itself. We have to speak up."
Of those who remain in detention there, he writes: "While I sit here. . . they are being beaten and starved. 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."
But Murat himself acknowledges the conundrum in closing the detention centre at Guantánamo. "They can't just close it like that. There are many innocent prisoners who have no country to go to if they are released. If they go to their own countries they will be tortured. While many countries say Guantánamo should be closed, no country is willing to take these people. It's a very difficult situation."
Murat will address a number of public meetings during his visit to Ireland as a guest of Amnesty International this week. He will also take part in a vigil at Shannon airport to protest against its use as a refuelling stop for US military aircraft. "By allowing the use of Shannon, the Irish Government is supporting the people who are responsible for this," he says.
Colm O'Gorman, executive director of Amnesty's Irish branch, said Murat's story was a "vivid insight into a world of illegal detentions, abuse of prisoners and solitary confinement that has become all too familiar".
Apart from Guantánamo, O'Gorman said hundreds of people remain detained without charge, trial or judicial review at the US airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan. Furthermore, he said, at least 38 people have disappeared into secret prisons where their fate and conditions are unknown.