German Minister speaks out against Guantanamo

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, facing criticism that he delayed the release of a German-born Guantanamo Bay prisoner, spoke out against US practices at the base last night during a rare visit to the Caribbean.

In a news conference with Dominican Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso, Steinmeier declined to comment specifically on Murat Kurnaz’s five-year confinement but criticised Washington for allowing extended detentions at the base on nearby Cuba.

“Without a process that conforms with a state of rights and international law, we are not in agreement with keeping prisoners at that base for so long,” Steinmeiner said through a Spanish translator.

Steinmeier faces allegations by German media and a European Parliament report that he and other officials spurned a US offer to free the German-born Turk in 2002.

Kurnaz, 24, was detained in Pakistan in 2001 and held at Guantanamo, where he says he was beaten, housed under fluorescent lights for entire days and kept in solitary confinement.

The ex-detainee was released last year and returned to Germany when a US federal judge found that evidence did not justify his detention and Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened.

Steinmeier has denied knowing of an “official offer” to free Kurnaz and recently defended the actions of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government, of which he was chief of staff.

Dozens of European and Latin American diplomats were expected in Santo Domingo this week for a Rio Group conference on Latin American development and rebuilding in Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.