"No one gets out of Guantánamo by any legal process, because there is none."

pick your amendment... 5th...? 8th...? 14th...?

lou dubose writing in the washington spectator via alternet...

Murat Kurnaz, German born of Turkish parents, could be an expert witness and fact witness for any legislative or judicial procedure that would cast a cold eye on the transgressions of law, the Constitution or the fundamental precepts of human rights perpetrated by George Bush's terror warriors. Pick your amendment. Fifth: one is not compelled to be a witness against oneself, or deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law. Eighth: protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Fourteenth: the state cannot deprive someone of life, liberty or property without due process.

[...]

The legal process by which Kurnaz was freed from Guantánamo was, in a sense, irrelevant. It's not precedent-setting, because there is no effective process that provides detainees access to justice.

[...]

"No one gets out of Guantánamo by any legal process," [Kurnaz' attorney Baher Azmy from Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey] said. "Because there is none."

[...]

Kurnaz was released only because Azmy and his colleague in Germany, Bernhard Docke, took his case to the court of public opinion in Germany. Their skillful use of the media persuaded German chancellor Angela Merkel to prevail on George Bush to release Kurnaz.

after 5 years in guantánamo without being charged, this is how murat kurnaz was finally freed and sent home...

Wearing goggles that shut out all light, a soundproof headset and a mask that covered his mouth so he could not speak, spit or bite, the prisoner arrived at Ramstein Air Force Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany, under the tightest security. ... During the seventeen-hour ride, the prisoner was provided with neither food nor water. Nor was he allowed to stretch his legs or relieve himself.

[...]

He didn't know he'd been returned home to Germany until an American enlisted man removed his goggles and he saw three German policemen standing outside the airplane.

"He was dumped on German soil like some sort of alien," said Bernhard Docke, one of Kurnaz's attorneys, from the north German city of Bremen.

[...]

"They threw my clothes over the fence," Kurnaz said in an interview in his lawyer's office in Bremen. "They told me, get ready to move. I thought to another prison; then I was back in Germany." That the U.S. soldiers continued to curse and humiliate him during the flight from Guantánamo gave him reason to believe he wasn't flying home to freedom. "They treated me the same as always," he said. "Like I was the number one terrorist."

please, god, make the bad men in the white house go away...

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