Germany probes abuse of ex-Guantanamo inmate-lawyer

BERLIN, Oct 17 (Reuters) Germany is investigating claims by a Turkish man with German residency who says he was abused by German soldiers in Afghanistan before being sent to the U S Guantanamo Bay prison camp, his lawyer said today.

Murat Kurnaz, who spent nearly five years at the prison before his August release, said in a magazine interview that two German soldiers had pulled him by the hair and slammed his head into the ground in front of U S soldiers in Afghanistan.

''Bodily harm is a crime. The state prosecutors in Potsdam have therefore launched an investigation against unknown perpetrators,'' Kurnaz's lawyer Bernhard Docke said in an e-mail.

''Simultaneously the defence ministry has set up an internal working group to clarify the allegations. This commission has stated its interest in personally questioning Kurnaz about the allegations,'' Docke said.

Docke said his client had doubts about the readiness of the defence ministry to conduct a transparent investigation after its initial denials and had decided not to cooperate with it.

Kurnaz would, however, cooperate with the Potsdam prosecutors' investigation and was also willing to testify before a parliamentary inquiry that is investigating possible German cooperation with the CIA, Docke said.

The prosecutor's office in Potsdam had no immediate comment.

If confirmed, Kurnaz's allegations could embarrass Germany, already defending itself against allegations that the previous government secretly aided a U S programme to kidnap and fly terrorism suspects to third countries for interrogation.

German citizen Khaled el-Masri, whose story of ''rendition'' has already been a source of embarrassment to the German government, said he was interrogated by a German while held in Afghanistan.

Germany has some 2,900 troops in Afghanistan as part of a NATO peacekeeping mission.

Kurnaz was freed after more than four years in captivity and returned to Germany in chains on a U S military aircraft.

German media reports have said Berlin turned down a U S offer to return Kurnaz to Germany made some four years ago.

Dubbed the ''Bremer Taliban'', Kurnaz, born in Germany in 1982, was in the process of becoming a German citizen when he was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001.

He was taken from there to Guantanamo in Cuba, where the United States is holding hundreds of people it suspects are linked to al Qaeda or Afghanistan's Islamist Taliban.

Kurnaz has said he suffered abuse at Guantanamo and interrogation techniques including sexual humiliation, water torture and the desecration of Islam.

The United States has been criticised by human rights groups and some of its allies for holding suspects at the naval base without charge.

REUTERS BDP BS1456