Full Name: Murat Kurnaz Nationality: Turkish Age: 22 Family status: Married Occupation: Apprentice Shipbuilder
Murat Kurnaz was schooled in Bremen, was interested in sports, played keyboard and guitar in a band with friends, attended the local Turkish Mosque, and had gained an apprenticeship to be a shipbuilder. His mother describes him as a "helpful, credulous and cordial person, who always treated everyone with respect". In July 2001 he married his fiancée at a ceremony in Turkey. After his marriage, Murat Kurnaz became an increasingly devout Muslim. He started attending a Moroccan mosque called Abu Bakr instead of the family mosque, and also became increasingly incensed at what he saw as the persecution of Muslims around the world. Less than a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, Murat Kurnaz suddenly left his parents home to go to Pakistan. His mother, Rabiye Kurnaz, later recalled him saying he wanted to travel there "to see and live the Koran". On arrival in Pakistan, Murat Kurnaz went from one Madrassa (Islamic school) to another. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities sometime in late November 2001. Little else is known about his arrest, except that he was transferred to US custody not long afterwards. Rabiye Kurnaz received a postcard from her son stating that he was in a prison camp in Afghanistan. The next postcard she received was in January 2002, from Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba. Murat was a designated "enemy combatant" and was at the beginning of his indefinite detention without charge or trial in the US prison camp in Guantánamo, where he has been held virtually incommunicado.
After the postcard of January 2002, Murat has corresponded very little with the outside world. The last postcard his mother received was in May 2002. According to released detainees, correspondence is censored and restricted, letters often being withheld unless detainees "co-operate" with US interrogators. Murat Kurnaz's postcards only briefly mentioned his health, and did not indicate whether he had received the letters his family had been sending him. Murat Kurnaz's inability or unwillingness to write home has caused his family and lawyer to become increasingly concerned about his mental and physical condition, especially in light of allegations of torture and ill-treatment made by released detainees, and the cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions of detention experienced by many in the camp itself.
Following the US Supreme Court's decision in June 2004 that the prison camp at Guantánamo falls under the jurisdiction of the US federal courts, the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York filed a habeas corpus petition in a US District Court on behalf of Murat Kurnaz in July 2004. The petition seeks to enforce Murat Kurnaz's right to a judicial determination of whether there is a factual or legal basis for the US government's position that he is an "enemy combatant". Background Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, wrote to the Kurnaz family saying that there was no possibility of making diplomatic representations on his behalf. US authorities regard the status of detainees at Guantánamo as a bilateral diplomatic matter between them and the government of the detainee. However, the Turkish government viewed Murat Kurnaz as "German-Turkish", and only after intense lobbying by Rabiye Kurnaz has the Turkish government come to view him as their responsibility. Despite this recognition, the Turkish government has shown little interest in pressuring the US government over Murat Kurnaz's case. In August of this year Thomas Röwekamp, the Senator for Interior Affairs in Bremen, Germany, declared that Murat Kurnaz's indefinite residence visa had lapsed. This is because Murat Kurnaz had been out of Germany for over six months and had not reapplied. Röwekamp stated that "if [Murat Kurnaz] were to arrive now at a German airport with his passport and ask for permission to enter, he wouldn't be allowed to enter the country". In addition, a new immigration law is due to be enacted in January 2005 in Germany which restricts access to Germany to those who are suspected of any involvement in "terrorism". This means that even if Murat Kurnaz is released from Guantánamo where the US authorities have by their actions labelled him as a "terrorist", he will be sent to Turkey, possibly never to be allowed back to the country of his birth, where his family reside and where he spent his youth. Guantnamo Bay - A Human Rights Scandal Many of those held were captured during the international conflict in Afghanistan, from where transfers to the Naval Base began in January 2002 under harsh conditions of transportation. Others were arrested elsewhere and handed over to the US authorities. Sporadic transfers to, and releases from, the base continue, but the precise numbers, identities and nationalities of those held has never been made public. None of the detainees captured during the international armed conflict in Afghanistan have been granted prisoner of war status or brought before a "competent tribunal" to determine his status, as required by Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention. The majority are held in maximum security blocks in small cells, sometimes for up to 24 hours a day and with very little out-of-cell exercise time. They have also been subjected to repeated interrogations sometimes for hours at a time and without the presence of a lawyer, raising fears that statements may have been extracted under coercion. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the only international organization that has been allowed access to the detainees. It is now well over a year since the ICRC first stated that it had observed a "worrying deterioration" in the mental health of a large number of the detainees, not least as a result of the indefinite nature of their detention. In November 2001, President Bush signed a Military Order establishing trials by military commission which have the power to hand down death sentences and against whose decisions there will be no right of appeal to any court. In addition to the lack of right to appeal, the commissions lack independence and restrict the right of defendants to choose their own counsel and to an effective defence. The commissions also accept a lower standard of evidence than in ordinary courts. This could include evidence extracted under torture or coercion. On 8 November 2004, a US federal judge, responding to a habeas corpus appeal filed on behalf of a Yemeni national facing trial by military commission, ruled that the Third Geneva Convention "applies to all persons detained in Afghanistan during the hostilities there". The judge ruled that Salim Ahmed Hamdan should be presumed to be a prisoner of war unless a "competent tribunal", as required under the Third Geneva Convention, decided otherwise. As a presumed prisoner of war, the judge ruled, the Yemeni national could not be tried by military commission. He also ruled that the military commission's rules allowing defendants to be excluded from certain military commission sessions and with certain evidence withheld from them were unlawful. Military commission proceedings have been suspended while the government appeals the ruling. On 28 June 2004 the United States Supreme Court ruled that US
courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the lawfulness
of detentions at Guantánamo bay. In response the Bush administration
announced the formation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal
scheme under which Guantánamo detainees will be able to
challenge their so-called "enemy combatant" status.
They are not provided with a lawyer for this process, and secret
evidence may be used against them. The first pre-trial commission
hearings took place in August 2004. Instead of doing all it can
to facilitate the full judicial review of the lawfulness of the
detentions at Guantánamo bay, the government appears to
be trying to narrow the scope of this review and at the same time
proceed with its plans to hold trials by military commission that
flout basic standards.
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 Rabiye Kurnaz holding a photo of her son Murat.
© AFP |