An innocent man loses 5 years of his life at Guantanamo Bay

This guys story fits a pattern. It becomes impossible not to believe that this kind of torture became, for a while at least, systematic during the Bush years.

At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America’s shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.

The story Kurnaz told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley is a rare look inside that clandestine system of justice, where the government’s own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: Murat Kurnaz, Afghanistan, war on terror, secret rendition, torture, 60 minutes, Bush, Cheney