And there is the crux. Hearsay and innuendo. The whole thing seems to hark too closely back to the McCarthy era and HUAC to be at all comfortable.

>SNIP
>>Are you also familiar with the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) and the accidental declassification of information on Murat Kurnaz where the information showed nothing detrimental at all but for a single unsigned, unsourced memo that said he was a terrorist, but the CSRT classified him as an enemy combatant anyway? How many more of these might there be? How can this stuff be defended? These are real people whose lives are being destroyed by what appears in some cases to be mere overzealousness.
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>>There ought to be a real, honest, non-partisan, objective look at the detainees to see who is a danger and who is not. Clearly the CSRT isn't doing a proper job of it.
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>>>But of course we'd feel good about ourselves and the man on the street in Karachi and Kandehar would think well of us, and that's what's really important <s>
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>http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/murat-kurnaz.html
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>I find it amazing that Germany isn't geting more questions and attention on his case...
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>A snippet:
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>But police did turn up some troubling bits of hearsay. One of the students at a shipbuilding school Kurnaz attended told investigators that Kurnaz had "Taliban" written on the screen of his cell phone. Then there were the comments of Kurnaz's mother, who, when questioned by police days after her son's disappearance, fretted that he had "bought heavy boots and two pairs of binoculars" shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
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>Seizing on these details, the German media dubbed Kurnaz the "Bremen Taliban." This was clearly unsettling to German officials, who just one year after the 9/11 attacks were still reeling from the revelation that three hijackers lived and studied in Germany without ever catching the attention of police or intelligence agencies. Many politicians had serious qualms about letting the German Turk back into the country.
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>The first sign of these doubts came in the form of a classified report on the Guantanamo visit, which was issued on October 8, 2002, and circulated through the top ranks of the German government. It argues that releasing Kurnaz and using him as a spy would be "problematic," in that he had "no access to the Mujahideen milieu." It also notes, "In light of Kurnaz's possibly imminent release, we should determine whether Germany wants the Turkish citizen back and, given the expected media attention, whether Germany wants to document that everything possible was done to prevent his return."
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>Three weeks later, Kurnaz's case was discussed at the presidential round, a standing Tuesday meeting held at the Germany Chancellery and attended by top officials from the foreign and interior ministries as well as the German security services. The group decided to block his return, and on October 30 the interior ministry issued a secret memo with a plan for keeping him out of the country, which involved revoking his residency permit on the grounds that he had been abroad for more than six months. Germany's domestic intelligence agency later notified the CIA in writing of the government's "express wish" that Kurnaz "not return to Germany."
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