What 60 Minutes Didn’t Tell You About Murat Kurnaz

[cwo_ghwebb]

Murat Kurnaz was portrayed as an unjustly imprisoned man in a recent CBS report — when there is ample evidence linking the former Guantánamo inmate to terrorism.

“At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America’s shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed.” Thus intoned CBS correspondent Scott Pelley on Sunday night in introducing the 60 Minutes report on former Guantánamo inmate and book author Murat Kurnaz. Now, it is already something of a logical feat to assemble “ample evidence” for a purely negative proposition. But leaving this peculiarity aside, the principal problem with CBS’s claim is that there is, on the contrary, ample evidence that Kurnaz was indeed connected to terrorist circles and had left Germany to fight with the Taliban, just as US authorities have maintained.

Who watches 60 Minutes? But for the two or three who do, this article thoroughly takes these so-called "journalists" to task.

What 60 Minutes Didn’t Tell You About Murat Kurnaz

More to the point, far from “agreeing” that Kurnaz had no connection to terror, starting in 2002, Germany’s Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BKA) — the German equivalent of the FBI — itself classified Kurnaz as a “security risk.” This classification was based on a number of pieces of information linking Kurnaz to Islamic extremist circles in Germany, including to the milieu of the “Hamburg cell” that planned the 9/11 attack

Kurnaz is not a German citizen. This fact undoubtedly contributed to Germany’s indifference to his fate. Kurnaz is a Turkish citizen, and the Schröder government appears to have considered him to be Turkey’s problem.

The German BKA File:

According to the BKA, Kurnaz was, more specifically, attending the sermons of one Ali Miri at the Abu-Bakr Mosque in Bremen. Employing common German police nomenclature for Islamic extremist imams, the Oppermann summary describes Miri as a “preacher of hate” [Hassprediger]. Oppermann notes, moreover, that according to statements made by Kurnaz’s mother, Rabiye, to the Bremen police, Kurnaz had been “brainwashed” by Miri. It should be noted here — as it is not in the CBS report — that Kurnaz left for Pakistan without informing his family. On October 5, Rabiye Kurnaz reported his disappearance to the Bremen police. In her statement to the police, she clearly expressed her suspicion that her son had gone to fight with the Taliban, having been encouraged by Ali Miri to do so. In excerpts from Rabiye Kurnaz’s October 5, 2001 deposition to the Bremen police published in the German tabloid Bild, she describes confronting Miri about her son’s disappearance: “I told him that he wanted to help the Taliban after all, that he had completely brainwashed Murat.”

The German BKA File:

In the Oppermann summary of the BKA file, we read: “Independently of one another, two direct witnesses have declared to the Bremen police that Kurnaz approved of the September 11 terrorist attacks, describing them as ‘God’s will.’”

Conspiracy Broadcast Network

Media Bias

[Warron]

If they have so much evidence against this guy or any of the the rest, then they would have been convicted in a court of law 6 years ago instead of siting in limbo while the government tries to invent new rules where they dont have to present any evidence. When you have clear and convincing evidence, you go to trial and get it over with. When you have nothing, you screw around for as long as possible trying to dig something up. 6 years is well into screwing around.

Half the governments own lawyers have quit because they think the whole thing is a load of bs. If they wanted to convice anyone who is not an idiot that these people are guilty, then they should have went to trial years ago and presented the evidence. These days they just look like a bunch of incompetants trying to cover up their mistakes.

[cwo_ghwebb]

I always wonder why folks believe non-citizens captured outside our country doing harm to our citizens, have the same rights as those who commit traffic violations in our country?

What I was commenting on in the original piece, was the biased reporting by CBS.

[Warron]

And the article you quoted was just the opposite bias by someone else, hence my comment.