Berlin fest cheers mum’s fight for son at Guantanamo

BERLIN: The true story of a mother’s battle to bring her son back from Guantanamo Bay premiered to cheers in Berlin on Saturday, as the German filmmakers called for reparations for the family.

"Rabiye Kurnaz vs George W. Bush" is one of 18 movies from around the world vying for the Berlinale film festival’s Golden Bear top prize, to be awarded on Wednesday.

The film, which was warmly received at a press preview, is by Andreas Dresen, often called the "German Ken Loach" for his empathetic profiles of working-class people’s struggles.

Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen but life-long resident of Germany, was held for almost five years at the US prison in Cuba before being released without charge in 2006.

The film traces his mother Rabiye’s fight from her row house in the northern German city of Bremen all the way to the US Supreme Court in Washington to win her son’s freedom in the landmark case cited in the title.

But, in what has been described as one of the biggest political scandals since reunification, the German government rejected a US offer to release him despite its vocal opposition to Guantanamo because it feared a political backlash. Berlin used what Dresen called the "Kafkaesque" legal justification that the Turkish man had lost his residency rights as he had been away for more than six months from Germany -- although this was due to Kurnaz’s imprisonment.

Dresen, 58, said he had followed the case closely at the time and gave credit to the government of Angela Merkel who, days after taking office in 2005, pledged to work for his return which finally came the next year.