Former Guantanamo Detainee Murat Kurnaz reading in Ireland

gaf1983

http://www.amnesty.ie/live/irish/article.asp?id=19973&page=00

Has anybody been to see him speak? Has anyone read his book?

I'd like to ask him what he was doing in Pakistan in the first place - the press release said he went there because he became a devout muslim/went there on holiday - but surely you can be a devout muslim anywhere in the world, don't have to go all the way to Pakistan to do so.

Karoma

gaf1983 wrote: »

http://www.amnesty.ie/live/irish/article.asp?id=19973&page=00

Has anybody been to see him speak? Has anyone read his book?

Not yet; I was hoping to go this weekend.

I'd like to ask him what he was doing in Pakistan in the first place - the press release said he went there because he became a devout muslim/went there on holiday - but surely you can be a devout muslim anywhere in the world, don't have to go all the way to Pakistan to do so.

Irrelevant! He should be free to travel (If he wanted to immerse himself in Muslim culture, that's his call.) He should not be assumed guilty until proven innocent. He should not have had to endure the conditions in that camp.

wes

gaf1983 wrote: »

http://www.amnesty.ie/live/irish/article.asp?id=19973&page=00

Has anybody been to see him speak? Has anyone read his book?

Can't say that I have.

gaf1983 wrote: »

I'd like to ask him what he was doing in Pakistan in the first place - the press release said he went there because he became a devout muslim/went there on holiday - but surely you can be a devout muslim anywhere in the world, don't have to go all the way to Pakistan to do so.

Why shouldn't he go where he wants?

The question that should be asked, is why did the US and there pals in the ISI kidnap him and why has no one been brought to justice for that crime?

This could have easily happened to me. I have family in Pakistan and Kashmir. I find it disturbing that you some how think I need a good reason to go there.

gaf1983

Of course I agree that to be held for five years without charge is absolutely shocking. He should certainly go through the courts to try to get compensation for his unlawful detention, and also for the alleged abuses he suffered while in detention. However, unlike you Wes, he does not have any relatives in Pakistan. I am just curious about why he decided to travel to Pakistan in October 2001. I will ask him this weekend.

wes

gaf1983 wrote: »

However, unlike you Wes, he does not have any relatives in Pakistan. I am just curious about why he decided to travel to Pakistan in October 2001. I will ask him this weekend.

Why does he even need relatives? Maybe he wanted to look at some Mughal buildings.

I don't see why he needs to justify his visit. The US have no evidence at all to connect him to terrorism. The burden of proof is actually on them to prove wrong doing, not the other way around.

I gave the example of my family as it could just as easily have been me or someone like me. There are plenty of other reasons to go to Pakistan.

edanto

gaf1983 wrote: »

I am just curious about why he decided to travel to Pakistan in October 2001. I will ask him this weekend.

Fair enough. What if he says that he just wanted to go?

What kind of answer are you hoping to elicit?

"I'd heard of a terrorist movement based in caves and decided to see if I could play my part in killing Americans because I hate their freedoms."

'course if you'd like to learn a bit about the conditions he's been in over the past five years, you could do worse than reading Bad Men.

http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/HB-40429/bad-men.htm

The Guardian has an extract in this article, but it's rather a boring part of the book, so I wouldn't use this extract to judge it. I highly recommend the book.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/21/guantanamo.usa

Extract:

In November 2004, I met Moazzam Begg in Camp Echo. Moazzam was from Birmingham, and we talked for hours and he poured out his desperate experiences. He impressed me from the beginning with his understated eloquence. He had been with his family in Afghanistan, working on a charitable project that involved schools and water wells. When he and his family fled the war to Pakistan, he became one of hundreds sold for bounties to the Americans. Later, he ended up in Guantánamo, tarred as a major terrorist.

When my notes got back to Washington, in January 2005, I wrote a 40-page memo about how Moazzam had been abused by the US military in Afghanistan. Every word was censored. The way the military had pretended to torture his wife in the next room, even information about American soldiers murdering two prisoners in front of Moazzam, was considered a "method of interrogation" that could not be revealed. I was not allowed to reveal how my clients' mental health was crumbling either. Moazzam had been tortured, then held in solitary confinement for 18 months; he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder; he had nightmares, flashbacks, all the symptoms. But this, the military said, was a privacy issue.

gaf1983

Thanks for the book recommendation, edanto, I will check it out.

edanto wrote: »

"I'd heard of a terrorist movement based in caves and decided to see if I could play my part in killing Americans because I hate their freedoms."

I think your tongue was firmly in your cheek when you made the above comment. I don't think people join terrorist cells because they hate the freedoms of citizens of other countries. Rather, I would agree with the analysis Jason Burke presents in his book "Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam."

Burke provides a series of case studies, examining the circumstances of the men who have gone on to commit or attempt terrorist attacks in the name of Al-Qaeda. Interestingly, many of the men Burke writes about are in similar situations before they turn to fanaticism - they are generally disillusioned people who feel that they have not yet fulfilled their potential in life, or feel they have been denied the opportunity to fulfil their potential, and become bitter about this - Al Qaeda gives them a target for their bitterness. More often than not, they come under the influence of an older radical in their home country who had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, who are only too happy to impart their ideology to angry young men in their community.

When I initially heard Murat Kurnaz would be speaking in Ireland, my primary reason was to find out about the appalling conditions he has had to endure for the five years, not least being kept in a complete legal limbo. I have read about the torture techniques used by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo and while I can never hope to know fully what it's like to suffer them as I have, thankfully, never been subjected to them unlike the hundreds who have had the misfortune to pass through (or not - many still remain there) that place. It was my sister who asked what was he doing in Pakistan in the first place.

When a number of factors are considered, such as the fact that he had gotten married the summer before he set off for Pakistan yet left his wife in Turkey behind him; the fact that he had no family ties in that country; the fact that he had been advised to go there by an iman in his mosque (why?); and the fact that there have been other young men who have travelled from across the world to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (entering the latter via Pakistan), arose this curiosity in me.

Der Spiegel, in an article about the Kurnaz affair, say that in September 2002:

The government of SPD and Greens had only recently tightened legislation on foreign nationals, and Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD) had ordered the compiling of a list of 100 individuals considered dangerous, although most of them could not be deported because they would likely face torture or death in their native countries. Although Kurnaz would have been a candidate for Schily's list...

Why would he have been a candidate for that list?

I think it is quite reasonable to be curious as to the reasons why he went to Pakistan - I'm not the only one who is. Cem Özdemir, an MEP with the German Green Party since 1981, recalls in his recounting of his meeting with Kurnaz, that he too was left in the dark about why Kurnaz had travelled to Pakistan:

I'm not able to draw up a conclusive profile of Murat Kurnaz following our personal meeting, nor am I able to explain what the ultimate reason for his decision to go to Pakistan in October of 2001 was.

Rossibaby

Karoma wrote: »

Not yet; I was hoping to go this weekend.


Irrelevant! He should be free to travel (If he wanted to immerse himself in Muslim culture, that's his call.) He should not be assumed guilty until proven innocent. He should not have had to endure the conditions in that camp.

no human being should have to endure the conditions there

nesf

gaf1983 wrote: »

When I initially heard Murat Kurnaz would be speaking in Ireland, my primary reason was to find out about the appalling conditions he has had to endure for the five years, not least being kept in a complete legal limbo. I have read about the torture techniques used by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo and while I can never hope to know fully what it's like to suffer them as I have, thankfully, never been subjected to them unlike the hundreds who have had the misfortune to pass through (or not - many still remain there) that place. It was my sister who asked what was he doing in Pakistan in the first place.

When a number of factors are considered, such as the fact that he had gotten married the summer before he set off for Pakistan yet left his wife in Turkey behind him; the fact that he had no family ties in that country; the fact that he had been advised to go there by an iman in his mosque (why?); and the fact that there have been other young men who have travelled from across the world to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (entering the latter via Pakistan), arose this curiosity in me.

Der Spiegel, in an article about the Kurnaz affair, say that in September 2002:



Why would he have been a candidate for that list?

I think it is quite reasonable to be curious as to the reasons why he went to Pakistan - I'm not the only one who is. Cem Özdemir, an MEP with the German Green Party since 1981, recalls in his recounting of his meeting with Kurnaz, that he too was left in the dark about why Kurnaz had travelled to Pakistan:

I don't disagree with you that it's quite murky. But even if he went with the intention of considering joining a terrorist cell it still doesn't justify being held for five years without trial etc.

gaf1983

I went to see him speak last night in Limerick. Truly horrific the things himself and the other prisoners were (and still are) being subjected to in Guantanamo, and to the other countries (Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia) they are often shipped off to to be disposed of/tortured some more.

I found him to be a very composed, witty speaker, seemingly not all that bitter about having five years of his life robbed from him. He explained his reasons for being in Pakistan were that he got involved with the Jama’at al-Tablighi movement in Bremen, doing social outreach work with them for about a year before he went to Pakistan. He travelled to Pakistan in October 2001 because they have one of their largest training schools there. He spent six weeks in the training school, and when that ended, he was on the bus back to the airport to get his flight back to Germany, when Pakistani police stopped the bus at a routine police checkpoint. He says because of his light skin he was signalled out on the bus and questioned about his visa, papers etc - he had valid ones. Nonetheless, he was brought to a police cell were he was told he would be detained that night. The following morning, instead of being released and allowed continue his way to the airport, he was blindfolded, thrown into a car and brought to a detention facility. He says the Pakistani authorities accepted a bounty for him from the US and some weeks later he was flown to Guantanamo, not that he knew where he was at the time. He stayed there for five years, denied access to a lawyer or any form of communication with the outside world. You can find out more in his book.

Meeting him in person really made those stories about extraordinary renditions, legal loopholes and torture that sometimes emerge from the white fuzz of 24 hour news channels all the more real.

SeanW

Damn straight!

People have rights. Even if someone is terrorist scum, they have a right to a fair trial which finds them guilty before subjected to that sort of thing, IMO. (If someone is a proven terrorist, the authorities can do what they like to them to get information and save lives as far as I'm concerned).

If his story is true, then he was wronged in one of the worst ways possible. When governments, for any reason, start trampling all over the rights of innocent (i.e. not found guilty of anything in a fair trial in a court of law) people, it is something we should all be very concernet about.