Not an Average Case

"It was definitely not a run of the mill case," Fischer told a parliamentary committee investigating the case of Murat Kurnaz on Monday. "We tended to the case as well as we could."

Fischer also said the German government was uncertain if Kurnaz posed a threat to the country's national security and called accusations leveled at current Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of working to keep Kurnaz from returning to Germany "simply wrong."

Opposition party members accused Fischer of not having done enough for Kurnaz' release, charges the former minister denied, saying he told then US Secretary of State Colin Powell to either charge or release Kurnaz.

US decision made at "higher level"

Powell was open to releasing the Kurnaz, according to Fischer, who added that the decisions to keep him imprisoned "were at higher levels." Fischer added that the US position not to release Kurnaz kept him from discussing the issue with former Interior Minister Otto Schily.

US forces seized Kurnaz in Pakistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and he was later sent to a US prison in Afghanistan before being incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay in 2002.

He was released last August because of a lack of proof that he had belonged to a terrorist organization, following repeated appeals by current Chancellor Angela Merkel to the US government after she took power in November 2005.

"Tragic case"

Earlier on Monday, former Deputy Interior Minister Claus Henning Schapper told the committee that being held at Guantanamo, where Kurnaz could not contact Bremen authorities, did not change the fact that his residence permit was legally invalid after spending six months outside Germany.

Calling Kurnaz' imprisonment a "tragic case," Schapper said he was not informed of a US offer to release Kurnaz in 2002 by the former head of the foreign intelligence service and current interior ministry deputy minister August Hanning and former deputy president of constitutional protection and now secret service coordinator at the Chancellery Klaus-Dieter Fritsche.

No consideration to Kurnaz' fate

German intelligence agents allegedly interrogated Kurnaz while he was in the US military prison on Cuba and came to the conclusion he did not pose a threat to Germany.

A report by the European Union said last month that the agents deemed Kurnaz not to be a threat and accused the previous German ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens of refusing accept Kurnaz upon release from Guantanamo.

"Everything possible was attempted to keep Kurnaz away from Germany without thinking of what his fate would be," said Max Stadler, who serves on the committee and is a member of the opposition free-market liberal Free Democrats.

Greens party committee member Hans-Christian Ströbele said the entire situation seemed "hardly believable."

Steinmeier and Schily are also expected to testify in front of the committee in the next few weeks.