ANKARA - A US embassy official denied Monday that a German-born Turkish man accused of being an Al-Qaeda member had been released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay.
"There has been no release of a Turkish citizen recently," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
His comment came a day after the mother of 23-year-old Murat Kurnaz said there were indications her son had been released and flown to the Incirlik military base in the southern Turkish province of Adana.
A spokesman for the Adana police told AFP that Kurnaz was not in Turkey, adding that even though his return had been planned, he was not on the plane that landed at the base.
Kurnaz, who lived in Germany, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002.
A German lawyer for Kurnaz said in October that he was confident of securing his client's release on grounds of insufficient evidence.
The US authorities reportedly believed that Kurnaz's travelling companion, who was originally to accompany him to Pakistan, was a future suicide bomber, but the man never flew to Pakistan.
US investigators have also accused Kurnaz of being an Islamist "fighter" with links to Al-Qaeda, which he denies.
His lawyers argue he never fought, possessed no weapons and never went to Afghanistan.
According to his lawyers, Kurnaz was sexually humiliated by female interrogators at the prison in Cuba.
03/14/2005 14:39