While clicking around today for election news, I happened upon a disturbing video--a German resident claimed that when he was detained at Kandahar and later Gitmo, the Americans tortured him. Moreover, 60 Minutes is due to air the story tomorrow night.
Just in case this was some kind of bad dream, I moseyed over to CBS News' Web site to make sure this was for real. Unfortunately, it is.
A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Kurnaz is an ethnic Turk who has spent most of his life in Germany. While he was in Pakistan studying Islam, Pakistani police arrested him, and he was "auctioned off" to the United States for $3,000. At the time, we were offering "bounties" for suspicious foreigners.
Kurnaz was carted off to Kandahar--and that's where the real horror story begins.
Kurnaz claims that American troops subjected him to gruesome torture. Reading this, I have to think this sounds a lot like what our troops endured in World War II and Vietnam.
He claims American troops tortured him in Afghanistan by holding his head underwater, administering electric shocks to the soles of his feet, and hanging him suspended from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar and kept alive by doctors. "Every five or six hours they came and pulled me back down and the doctor came," he recalls. "He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart and when he said 'okay,' then they pulled me back up," he tells Pelley.
They bombarded him with questions about bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and he begged them to contact Berlin and verify who he was. Instead, he says ...
But they continued to torture him, he says. "They used to beat me when my head was underwater...they beat me into my stomach....I had to inhale the water," he tells Pelley.
Kurnaz was then transfered to Gitmo as an "enemy combatant," where things got no better.
His treatment there, he says, included repeated beatings at the hands of soldiers in riot gear, sleep-deprivation and solitary confinement. "It's dark inside, no lights and they can punish you in isolation... by coldness or...heat. They have special air conditioners. Very strong. They can turn it very cold or very hot."
After SCOTUS issued the Rasul ruling declaring that detainees have the right to due process, Kumaz sued to get his file released. The file contained evidence that even the military knew Kumaz was innocent. However, Kumaz wasn't released until 2006.
The Pentagon told 60 Minutes via email that Kurmaz' story was "not only unsubstantiated and implausible, (it is) simply outlandish." But come on ... the mere fact 60 Minutes is even airing this story post-Killian makes you think that there's something to this. Moreover, it's the lead story on the 60 Minutes site and is on the front page of the main CBS News site--above the scroll.
If Kumaz is telling the truth--and at this point, we can only assume he is, given that 60 Minutes is still going with this story--then a whole bunch of people, right on up to Rumsfeld, ought to be going before The Hague.