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Elite Troops Under Investigation

German Soldiers Admit They Guarded US Prison in Afghanistan

By Holger Stark

As part of the investigation into the alleged abuse of terrorist suspects by German soldiers in Afghanistan, officers from the German Special Forces (KSK) are for the first time making official statements -- and they admit that they helped US soldiers guard detainees.

Kandahar, January, 2002: It was so cold that the drinking water had frozen in its plastic containers. The German Special Forces (KSK) soldiers were dressed in desert uniforms and woolen hats and were armed with G36 rifles equipped with laser sights. Their mission? To help the US "accompany prisoners from the airplane to the American army prison camp."

The camp was flooded with light as military planes landed on the runway with more detainees, who were to be transported to the camp. "The prisoners were masked and tied together," recalls Master Sergeant L., who took part in the operation. He helped the American GIs lead the prisoners through the gate into the camp, past the clay outer wall and guardhouses. They were then put into one of the four wire cages, which only had a provisional awning for a roof. After transferring all the suspects into the camp, L. patroled up and down between the barbed wire fences.

The statements made by L., together with those given by around a dozen of his colleagues, form part of the records of a confidential hearing held by the office of the district attorney in the western German city of Tübingen. These are the first official documents in which the KSK's operation in Afghanistan is described by the soldiers themselves.

The investigators are actually following up the accusations made by a Turkish citizen from the northern German city of Bremen, Murat Kurnaz, who claims to have been mistreated by two German KSK soldiers when he was a prisoner in Kandahar in 2002. But the statements taken from members of the special forces before Christmas are now raising more questions than just the possible behavior of individual soldiers: They prove just how early German troops knew about the inhumane methods used by the Americans when dealing with suspected terrorists. And what is worse is they show that German soldiers even helped their American colleagues. After all, Kandahar was a base camp from where suspects were flown to CIA secret prisons and to Guantánamo.

Political implications

It’s hard to predict the long-term political repercussions of the Tübingen hearings, as it is still not clear when the then- governing Social Democratic-Green Party coalition found out exactly what was going on in Kandahar, or to what extent these missions were consistent with the mandate approved by the German government.

A government investigative committee has been set up to answer all these questions. Last Wednesday it heard former prisoner Murat Kurnaz describe his experiences in Kandahar. "The first night I was forced to sleep naked on the floor," he explained. "Later we were tortured, beaten and kicked." He also described how prisoners were given electric shocks and had their heads dunked in troughs of water.

The Germans stationed in Kandahar were also aware of the appalling prison conditions. “Prisoners had to relieve themselves within the cages,” remembers one lieutenant.

Even before they were sent abroad, the KSK troops, who are normally stationed in the small southern German town of Calw, already had an idea how dubious the mission in these camps was. The "1st Contingent of Operation Enduring Freedom," as the first elite soldiers sent to Afghanistan were officially called, opted for an unusual type of camouflage. According to Master Sergeant F., before being sent on the mission, the KSK soldiers removed the German flag from their uniform or painted over it with camouflage paint. The soldiers had come to an agreement that they should not be identified as German, says one lieutenant. The whole operation was classified as "secret," he says.

The methods used by the KSK can hardly be regarded as in line with the mandate set out by the German government in 2001: Although it was decided that "Operation Enduring Freedom" had the aims of "fighting terrorists, taking them prisoner and putting them on trial," the mandate also stipulated that this had to be done in accordance with human rights and the United Nations charter.