BERLIN, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The German armed forces have lost their clean slate in the war on terror
, as the story of a former Guantanamo inmate who claims he was abused by German special forces gets more backing with every day that passes.
Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national born and raised in Germany, leveled harsh allegations against the German military after his release from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Two weeks after his arrest in Pakistan at the end of 2001, Kurnaz said he faced two German soldiers in his prison near Kandahar
, Afghanistan
, where the United States had sent him for two months before he started his detention in Guantanamo.
"I had to lie on the ground, my hands tied on my back," he told German news magazine Stern. "One man pulled me up by my hair. 'Do you know who we are?' The guy wanted to show off. 'We are the German force.' He banged my head on the ground, which the Americans thought was funny."
He added the soldiers wore camouflage uniforms with the German flag attached.
Stern said the soldiers likely belonged to a German special force unit
, the Kommando Spezialkraefte, or KSK.
The KSK is an elite unit inside the German Bundeswehr that operates off the public radar; its missions have to be signed off by the Defense Ministry
, but much more is not known. The unit was created in the aftermath of several terrorist kidnappings in Germany starting in the late 1970s, most of which ended in death, due to inept police operations.
The Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, immediately dismissed the story; the KSK at the time had not been in Afghanistan, a spokesman assured -- they left for Afghanistan after Jan. 20, 2002
, weeks after Kurnaz claims he was abused.
It surfaced Wednesday, however, that individual KSK men may have been there after all, and even participated in missions cooperating with U.S. forces
, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported after talking to unnamed sources within the governing Social Democratic Party, SPD.
"This issue carries high exclusivity," an SPD lawmaker who did not want to be named told the Berliner Zeitung. Either the KSK had operated without political control, or the mission was signed off by then Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping
, also a Social Democrat.
"In any case it's a problem," the source said.
The case of Murat Kurnaz has gathered so much fuel that the government is considering implementing a parliamentary inquiry just to research his allegations.
A first inquiry board dealing with the German role in the war on terror is already on the way; it shows a role that far exceeds Kurnaz' allegations. It also deals with the case of German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and released when the Americans learned they had the wrong man.
Several German newspapers Wednesday said the government could remove the Kurnaz case from the general inquiry board and authorize the Defense Ministry to separately deal with the case. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung has already launched an internal investigation, interrogating KSK men about possible acts of abuse in Afghanistan.
Kurnaz has previously stated that he is not keen to cooperate with the Defense Ministry after they had attacked him when he initially filed his allegations. He will cooperate, however, with police in Potsdam, which launched an investigation after Kurnaz' allegations surfaced.
Potsdam, a city just outside Berlin, harbors the center for military planning that also oversees KSK missions outside Germany.
In any case
, Kurnaz has turned into a real embarrassment for the former government of Gerhard Schroeder, which had staunchly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq and human rights abuses in the war on terror.
Schroeder and Bush frequently clashed over the war, with U.S.-German relations significantly cooling down. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has since repaired the trans-Atlantic friendship.
While U.S.-German ties are not in danger of breaking again, the Bundeswehr may be in real trouble, observers say. If KSK men indeed abused Kurnaz, a political earthquake would pressure the current government to punish those responsible.
The Bundeswehr, usually confined to humanitarian missions and peacekeeping efforts as an honest broker, would lose its spotless democratic record.Related Topics Articles：
