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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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June 19th,
2009 - Parliamentary Inquiry Inconclusive over Germany’s Role in Iraq War |
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Parliamentary Inquiry Inconclusive
over Germany’s Role in Iraq War By Susan Houlton Deutsche Welle June 19, 2009 An inquiry committee
investigating the involvement of German spies in the Iraq war has presented
its findings, with members disagreeing on whether former chancellor Schroeder
helped oust Saddam Hussein. After hearing 140 witnesses
over more than three years, an inquiry committee of the German parliament has
presented a final report, in the form of a volume running to 2,500 pages. The committee had sought to
establish whether agents of the German foreign intelligence service BND
helped the Bush administration wage the Iraq war. In spite of the
"gigantic expenditure", the committee produced only "meagre
results" and couldn't "clear up key questions", said committee
chairman Siegfried Kauder of the Christian Democratic Union CDU. Another focus of the
investigation was the alleged failure of the previous government of Social
Democrat (SPD) chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to press for the release of two
Germans and a Turk held captive by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay
detention facility. Schroeder’s clean hands a myth? In their final report the
committee members disagreed on the question of whether two BND spies,
resident in Baghdad in March 2003, had provided crucial information to the
United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in support of US Air Force
combat operations. In December 2008, US General
Tommy Franks told the German "Spiegel" newsmagazine that
"these guys were invaluable" for the US bombing campaign against
targets in Baghdad. CDU committee members, as
well as those of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the environmentalist
Green Party consider this to be "an indirect participation by Germany in
the Iraq war". But SPD committee members
claim the information the BND operatives had given "did not violate the
Schroeder government's anti-war policy on Iraq", as it was
"intended to save only civilian installations from damage". The “Taliban” from Bremen Murat Kurnaz testifies about
his 4-year ordeal at Guantanamo Bay prisonBildunterschrift: Großansicht des
Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Murat
Kurnaz testifies about his 4-year ordeal in Guantanamo Bay prison The CDU and the SPD,
however, were in full agreement on the case of Murat Kurnaz, a German
resident with Turkish citizenship held at Guantanamo, as well as on German
cooperation in the CIA‘s rendition flights of terror suspects. Kurnaz, who has come to be
known as the "Bremen Taliban" (a reference to his German hometown),
was held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison from 2002 until 2006. He claimed that he was
tortured by the CIA and interrogated several times by German BND agents. The German opposition
parties - the FDP, the Greens and the Left Party - accuse the previous
government of prolonging Kurnaz's suffering by refusing to allow him back
into Germany after US officials had established his innocence and had
officially requested for Germany to take him back. "This is a clear case
of failure to render assistance, for which Frank-Walter Steinmeier must
accept responsibility," said Christian Stroebele of the Green Party. At the time, Steinmeier, the
current German foreign minister, was Chancellor Schroeder's chief of staff
and in charge of coordinating the work of German intelligence services. But the CDU and the SPD -
the ruling parties in the current grand coalition government - argue that
neither Steinmeier nor the Schroeder government as a whole could be blamed
for the fate of Murat Kurnaz "as the Turk was not a German citizen at
the time" and because it was difficult to establish "how dangerous
he really was." The two governing parties
also white-washed the Schroeder government in the cases of two other German
terror suspects. One involved Khaled
el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German, who was abducted by the CIA in Macedonia in
2004 and flown to Afghanistan for interrogation. He was later released. Another victim of CIA
rendition was Mohammed Haidar Zammar, a Syrian-born German who was kidnapped
in Morocco in 2001 and taken to Syria. He is currently serving a 12-year
prison sentence for allegedly belonging to a terrorist group. Steinmeier not quite off the hook During the past three years,
the inquiry committee heard evidence from 140 witnesses including prominent
politicians such as Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier himself and his
predecessor Joschka Fischer from the Green Party. Steinmeier was subject to
close public scrutiny, as he's the SPD's candidate for chancellor in
September’s general election in Germany. The Greens' Christian
Stroebele insists Steinmeier is a key figure in the scandals surrounding
Germany’s involvement in the US-led war on terror. As Schroeder's right-hand
man for intelligence matters, "he clearly failed to inform Joschka
Fischer about the BND‘s activities," Stroebele said. He added that he hoped that
the parliamentary investigation would bring more transparency into the work of
the German intelligence services and said: "This has been a healing
experience for these people." The only tangible results of
the committee's findings so far have been a ban on domestic intelligence
spies being used to interrogate people abroad, and the introduction of
greater powers for parliament to control Germany’s intelligence services. External link: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4407890,00.html |