Contradicting statements made by German Foreign Minister Steinmeier, a high-ranking former US official has said that German government officials did not try to get German-born Murat Kurnaz released from Guantanamo. In an interview with German TV program "Monitor," Pierre-Richard Prosper, the US government's former ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues until Oct 2005, said that German officials never contacted him about releasing Kurnaz from the detention camp. "During my entire time in office, Germany never showed any interest and I was the person to contact within the US government," said Prosper, who was responsible for returning Guantanamo inmates to their home countries from 2002 to 2005.Kurnaz was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001 on suspicion of being a terrorist and spent more than four years in detention before being released without charge from Guantanamo in 2006. He says he was tortured and abused at the camp. German government officials have denied delaying the release of Kurnaz, who has Turkish citizenship, but grew up in Germany. The case is now under investigation by a parliamentary committee. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's chief-of-staff, has come under fire for his role. Steinmeier has said that the Schröder government repeatedly talked to US officials about the Kurnaz case and lobbied for his release.
But Prosper, who left public service to work as an attorney at the beginning of the year, said he didn't know of any such conversations. "If the German government would have said: 'We want Kurnaz,' we would have immediately sat down to come to an agreement," Prosper said, according to German translations of the interview. Prosper added that it was "not a secret" that Kurnaz had been "considered for release" since 2002.