Murat Kurnaz

Who is Murat Kurnaz?

Murat Kurnaz is a Turkish citizen and legal resident of Germany who was wrongly held in extrajudicial detention by the United States at its military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan and in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba for five years. As a child of guest workers, under German law Kurnaz had to go through a process to gain citizenship after becoming 18, which he had in process when he was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001. He was only 19 years old at that time.

Officials of the United States and Germany had largely concluded in early 2002 that the accusations against Kurnaz were groundless, but he was detained for five years. He was released and arrived in Germany on August 24, 2006.

Kurnaz says that he was tortured during detention in Kandahar and Guantanamo. In testimony via videolink in 2008 to a United States congressional hearing, he described suffering electric shock, simulated drowning, and days spent chained by his arms to the ceiling of an airplane hangar at Kandahar. His memoir of his experience, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo was published in the German, French, Norwegian, Danish and Dutch languages in 2007. Excerpts were published serially by The Guardian beginning April 23, 2008.