Ex-Guantanamo inmate finds distracted audience at US Congress

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A handful of US lawmakers gave only half an ear to the testimony on Tuesday of a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who spent nearly five years in prison before being released without charge.

Murat Kurnaz, a Turk who was born in Germany, was arrested during a trip to Pakistan in autumn 2001 and delivered to US authorities in exchange for a payment of 3,000 dollars.

Kurnaz spent several nightmarish weeks at the US base in Kandahar, Afghanistan before being transferred to the US "war on terror" camp at Guantanamo.

US authorities determined in 2002 that Kurnaz had no terror links, but claimed that he remained a danger because one of his friends had committed a suicide attack -- even though the friend in question is alive, and has never...