"In the claws of a superpower"

Translating and assembling from sueddeutsche.de and other sources of the German press:
Murat Kurnaz was 19 when he was arrested in autumn 2001. He is ship-builder, used to live with his parents in Bremen, Germany, and had secretly left his family to study Islam at a Koran-school in Pakistan he claimed. His family is non-religious but he had discovered religious faith by himself and held contacts with the Islamic missioning movement Jamaa at-Tabligh. German security officials suspect he was recruited for Afghan Djihad and never went to a Koran-school. He also never reached Afghanistan and claims he mostly travelled around until he was arrested from a bus by Pakistan security officers for, as he claims, no apparent reason other than his looks and the fact that his passport identified him as a Turk living in Germany. They passed him on to the US-Americans who detained him to Guantánamo as "enemy combatant" at the beginning of 2002. In September 2004 he briefly appeared in front of a military tribunal but still heard no detailed accusation nor did he have a lawyer. He denied knowledge of terror involvement of the Jamaa movement and the plans for an assault of a former close friend.
When he finally gets to see a lawyer in October 2004 he tells him about being beaten by the US-Americans on the way to Guantánamo, being tied up for days and pushed into cold water with the head during interrogations. Later a US-judge stated that he was only kept for his contacts and not for actual involvement, but this trial was never finished. Also Germany did not really want to get him back. An extradition offer in 2002 was apparently turned down by the former gouvernment and the federal state of Bremen claimed just a few months ago that his residence visa had expired - which was ruled down by a court. German secret service agents went to talk to him in Guantánamo to find out about the Islamistic scene in Germany but apparently learned little. He claimes that he just had been in Pakistan at the wrong time. A sad example of double standards towards Guantánamo which started an enquiry commission at German Bundestag.
Acording to his lawyer, when he was passed to German officials in Rammstein yesterday, he was hancduffed on legs and hands and tied to the aircraft floor. His eyes had been closed with tape. In Guantánamo most brutal physical torture had been used systematically. The aim had been to deprive the captives of orientation and hope. A Pentagon official had asked during the negotiations leading to the release to treat Kurnaz "in a humane way".
He now faces an indictment of "foundating a terrorist association" in Bremen. For him, the first constitutional process in five years.