Kurnaz in Brussels

Murat Kurnaz, a German resident with Turkish citizenship, was held for more than four years at Guantanamo Bay, where he was classified by Washington as an "enemy combatant." He was released last August.

Neither the German nor the Turkish authorities tried to release him from Guantanamo and instead shifted responsibility on to the US government, Kurnaz told a special European Parliament committee investigating charges of illegal US secret service activities in Europe.

Kurnaz was arrested in Pakistan two months after the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. He was handed over to US authorities who took him to Guantanamo in January 2002, saying he was suspected of supporting Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.

Kurnaz told MEPs that he went to Pakistan to "deepen his (Muslim) faith" but that he had never done anything illegal.

"There is no excuse"

But Germany rejected a US offer to release Kurnaz from Guantanamo in October 2002, with Washington saying that there was no case against him, his lawyer said.

"There is no excuse for this," Bernhard Docke told DW-RADIO. "I hope that the European Parliament will shed light on this."

Back in Germany, however, authorities "tried to paint me as a liar, though they had decided to leave me in Guantanamo," Kurnaz told parliamentarians.

The Turkish government also "didn't bother at all about me while I was imprisoned," he said. "They thought I was a spy for Germany."

Turkish officials interrogating him in the camp had told him that it was up to the US to release him, Kurnaz said. Other Guantanamo inmates with Turkish citizenship, however, were taken back to Turkey, Kurnaz claimed.

Mistreated by Germans?

Kurnaz also said that German soldiers in Afghanistan mistreated him before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. US forces had handed him over to two members of the German Special Forces Command, KSK, who had pulled his head back, banged his head on the floor and one stamped on him, Kurnaz said.

"They asked me if I knew who they were and then they said, 'We are the KSK,'" he said, adding that the men had German flags on their uniforms and spoke German with him.

"I thought they would have some questions and that they could help me, but they told me I had chosen the wrong side," Kurnaz said.

The German defense ministry is currently investigating the claims. After saying that it had no evidence that German soldiers had interrogated Kurnaz, the authority last week admitted that KSK forces had been "in contact" with him, according to German media reports.

"It doesn't take much imagination (to believe) that the KSK soldiers were capable of doing that," Kurnaz said. "They were there to help the Americans, and we know from the Abu Ghraib case what US soldiers were doing there."

Kurnaz also told the European committee that officials from Denmark and Belgium had visited nationals imprisoned in the Guantanamo camp.

Kurnaz mulls further legal steps

A German parliamentary committee is currently studying whether German security agencies breached any German rules while assisting post-2001 US anti-terrorism operations.

European parliamentarians earlier this year slammed the German government under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for failing to "come clean" over its involvement in the Kurnaz case.

US authorities never issued an arrest warrant and there was no legal procedure against Kurnaz, his lawyer has said. Docke also told DW-RADIO that his client demanded the truth about the case.

"We'll decide whether to take further legal steps when we know what happened," Docke said.