German minister defends self over Guantanamo case

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's foreign minister denied on Thursday he had caused an innocent German-born Turk to be imprisoned for years at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier was testifying for the second time before a special parliamentary committee set up to investigate German cooperation with the U.S. "war on terror" after September 11, 2001. He is battling opposition demands that he resign.

The focus of his testimony centered on German-born Turk Murat Kurnaz who was arrested in Pakistan three weeks after the September 11 attacks and handed over to U.S. authorities.

They transferred him to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp on Cuba where he says he was tortured and abused. He was released in August 2006 without charges.

Steinmeier was former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's chief of staff at the time and coordinated intelligence matters. He rejected media allegations that he and other senior officials had turned down a U.S. offer to release Kurnaz in October 2002.

"The government tried many times to intervene on behalf of Kurnaz," he said. "The U.S. never considered releasing him."

Steinmeier made it clear the U.S. was responsible for Kurnaz's fate while he was in its custody. But he said: "I am not trying to shirk my responsibility."

The cases of Kurnaz and Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin who was kidnapped by the CIA and imprisoned in Afghanistan for five months, have dogged Steinmeier for more than a year and sparked opposition calls for his resignation.

"ALLAH'S WILL"

Earlier, former Interior Minister Otto Schily said he accepted "political responsibility" for the handling of the Kurnaz case but denied Kurnaz was a harmless individual.

He cited witness reports that Kurnaz had praised the 2001 attacks on the U.S..

"It wasn't just hearsay. There were witnesses who said Kurnaz called the September 11 attacks 'Allah's will'," he said.

"He may have allowed people around him to lead him astray, he was not harmless," Schily said.

Schily and Steinmeier rejected the notion that Washington had offered to release Kurnaz in October 2002, as German media have repeatedly said.

"There was no such offer, neither official nor unofficial," said Steinmeier during about six hours of questioning.

Kurnaz says he is not and never was a terrorist and insists he has become a victim of character assassination.

"They're trying to destroy me so the German politicians who let me sit in Guantanamo Bay won't lose their power," he told German weekly Stern.