May 20, 2008 C-SPAN
Murat Kurnaz Details His Plight Before House Subcommittee
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/05/8305_murat_kurnaz_de.htmlMurat Kurnaz, a young Turkish citizen born and raised in Germany, traveled to Pakistan to learn more about Islam in October 2001, weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. In short order, arrested and held by US forces in Kandahar, and then shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bad timing was his only crime.
By 2002, according to documents obtained by his attorneys, both the US and German governments had determined conclusively that Kurnaz was neither a terrorist, nor a terrorist sympathizer or supporter, but American military officials nonetheless refused to release him and instead held him in solitary confinement for five years. For much of that time, he was unaware that anybody in his family knew where he was or if he was alive. And for the entire stretch he was subjected to torture.
In his account before the House Foreign Affairs' Oversight Subcommittee on Tuesday, Kurnaz detailed a technique visited upon him in Kandahar called "water treatment"—a perverse twist on a more widely known technique called waterboarding—wherein the victim's head is forced into a bucket of water while he's punched repeatedly in the stomach, causing him to inhale water.
Additionally, he said, he was subjected to religious and sexual humiliation, administered unknown drugs against his will, and electrocuted via wires attached to his feet.
In a bitter irony, Kurnaz's innocence became the rationale for his continued incarceration. ............
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