World Prisons
All persons
Murat Kurnaz

Murat Kurnaz

1982

Nationality
Turkey
Occupation
writer

Murat Kurnaz (born 19 March 1982) is a Turkish citizen and legal resident of Germany who was held in extrajudicial detention by the United States at its military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan and in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba beginning in December 2001.

Incarceration history

Biography

Murat Kurnaz (born 19 March 1982) is a Turkish citizen and legal resident of Germany who was held in extrajudicial detention by the United States at its military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan and in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba beginning in December 2001. He was tortured in both places. By early 2002, intelligence officials of the United States and Germany had concluded that accusations against Kurnaz were groundless. According to the BBC, Germany refused to accept him at that time, although the US offered to release him. Kurnaz was detained and abused at Guantanamo for nearly five more years. He published a memoir of his experience, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo in German in 2007; translations to other European languages and English followed. In 2008 he testified in US Congressional hearings about treatment of detainees at the camp. He and his family live in Germany.

Related people

Same nationality and era where possible; falls back to shared nationality or era.

  • Zeynep Kuray
    1978Turkey

    Zeynep Kuray (born 1978) is a Kurdish journalist.

  • Esra Mungan
    1968Turkey
  • Burcu Çelik Özkan
    1986Turkey

    Burcu Çelik Özkan (born 1 January 1986, Muş) is a former member of the Turkish parliament for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

  • Edibe Şahin
    1960Turkey

    Edibe Şahin (born 1960 in Nazımiye, Tunceli, Turkey) was the mayor of the municipality of Tunceli (Mamekiye), the capital of Tunceli Province in Eastern Anatolia, for the Democratic Society Party (DTP).

  • Tuncay Özkan
    Tuncay Özkan
    1966Turkey

    Ahmet Tuncay Özkan (born 14 August 1966) is a Turkish journalist, writer and politician.