20% of ex-Gitmo detainees return to fight

Remember the people who insisted that all prisoners at Gitmo were innocent?

Administration officials said Wednesday that a classified Pentagon report concludes that of some 560 detainees transferred abroad from the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, about one in five has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or militant activity.

The finding comes amid reports that one former Guantánamo detainee released in 2007 under the administration of President George W. Bush is now involved with a branch of Al Qaeda based in Yemen, a group that President Obama has said sponsored the attempt to bomb an American airliner on Christmas Day."

Yemeni Gitmo detainees to be detained a bit longer

Smart move.

The alleged Christmas day terrorism plot has complicated plans by Barack Obama, US president, to shut the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

Following reports that two former inmates who took refuge in Yemen were behind the botched plot, senators from his own party were among those calling for detainee transfers to be halted pending an investigation into the links between Guantánamo and the Arab nation.

I've posted before about Gitmo detainees committing crimes after their release. This is not the first time that an Arab country, our "ally", has failed to keep the criminals locked up. Kuwait acquitted a Gitmo detainee after receiving him in 2005, and KSA attempts to "rehabilitate" Saudi prisoners released by the US military. I remember over the years many people online (no doubt Arabs and Arab Americans) claimed that all the Gitmo detainees are innocent.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined Republicans in calling for a halt to planned transfers of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen in the wake of revelations of ties between the Christmas day bombing attempt and terrorists in that country.

"Guantanamo detainees should not be released to Yemen at this time," Feinstein said in a statement. "It is too unstable."

Last week the Department of Justice announced that it had transferred six detainees to the government of Yemen. As the Washington Post notes, former Gitmo detainees in Yemen "have led and fueled the growing assertiveness of the al Qaeda branch that claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing."

There are 80 Yemenis left at the Guantanamo facility, almost half the remaining prison population. The Obama administration has already acknowledged that it will miss its one-year deadline for shuttering the prison; the emergence of Yemen as a flashpoint will likely further complicate their efforts.'

"Human Rights" Groups Shocked

President Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has for now denied terror suspects the right to trial. Human Rights groups are shocked. Angry Arabs are naturally angry.

Iraqis are not as outraged. Iraq Pundit writes in "Pity the Poor Murderer":

Look, I agree Gitmo should be closed. But I could not be more sick and tired of this argument that these guys are turned into killers as a result of their incarcertation. So very many men of my family and friends of my family and even a few women were imprisoned by the Baathists in Iraq. Okay, I have never been to Gitmo, but I will take a wild guess and say that the conditions in Iraq's prisons were at least as bad as Gitmo's and most likely dramatically worse. (According to a recent Pentagon report prepared at the request of the Obama White House, Gitmo satisfies Geneva Convention standards.) My relatives who were jailed did not shoot anyone. They were arrested for thinking the wrong thing by Baathist standards. I can't say this clearly enough: None of them turned into a murderer upon release from prison after years--in at least one case, more than a decade.

Needless to say, I agree with Iraq Pundit. Human Rights groups did not raise the same fuss about the rights of Iraqi civilians before 2003.

In other news that relates to human rights, Abu Ghraib has been reopened. Our Arab "brothers" do not seem happy about this bit of news either. The BBC article that Ustath As3ad linked to states that Abu Ghraib "became notorious for detainee abuse by US forces in 2004." I guess the BBC is just being honest, since Abu Ghraib did not gain notoriety for abuse of Iraqi innocents prior to 2003. Thus far I have read only one article that mentions torture and murder at Abu Ghraib before 2003: "Under Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Iraqis were thrown behind bars here. There were horrific stories of torture, abuse, execution without trial."

Amnesty International was one of the few human rights groups that published extensively on crimes by Saddam's regime, but the media and our Arab "brothers" never paid attention, never seemed as shocked as they are by the "abuse" at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo by Americans. The pre-2003 lack of attention will no doubt be blamed on Ronald Reagan, naturally.

Some Gitmo detainees should not be freed

At least two former Guantanamo Bay detainees ended up murdering Iraqis after they were released. Today we learn that another former detainee, freed in 2007, has become the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch. Thanks Molly for posting the link to the story below.

Freed by the U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief

By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: January 22, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

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Saudi ex-Gitmo detainees get Royal treatment

I'm watching a BBC special on what the Saudi government is doing to rehabilitate former Guantanamo prisoners. The so-called "beneficiaries" are kept at a detention center with swimming pools, Play Stations, large screen TVs, and catering. When they graduate, their lives are sponsored by the Saudi government and everything is paid for. These guys supported Al Qaeda. Some of them committed murder. One of them is Ahmad Abdullah Al-Shaie. He was interviewed and he says he's a victim, because in Baghdad, while engaged in his jihad, he was tricked by two Iraqis into driving a fuel tanker, which exploded a few minutes later, killing nine Iraqi civilians. He said the media reported that the explosion wounded 60 civilians. He said it should be 61.

Gitmo detainees should be considered guilty until proven innocent

I have met a few Arabs who've claimed that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are "innocent" and should be released immediately. While a few Gitmo detainees may be innocent, it is obvious that many detainees are indeed guilty of horrendous crimes. One detainee is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks on 9/11 and the person who beheaded WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl.

Nibras Kazimi has published a post about a former Gitmo detainee, released in 2005, who was responsible for murdering dozens of Iraqis since his release:

Al-‘Ajmi, the ex-Guantanamo guy, is seemingly responsible for an earlier truck bombing at the Iraqi Army HQ in the Harmat neighborhood of Mosul on March 23, 2008 that left 13 Iraqi soldiers dead and 30 injured, including 12 civilians. At least six of the dead soldiers were from Iraq’s Yezidi minority.

Today, there was another suicide bombing targeting a police station in Mosul that left scores dead and injured. I wonder if today's terrorist was yet another Kuwaiti or Saudi that had been released from Guantanamo...

It is important for the US military to release innocent detainees, but it is even more important to not release those who have ties to insurgents in Iraq, and who may end up in Iraq killing Iraqis and Americans. Gitmo detainees should be considered guilty until proven innocent. Leftists and Arabs who scream for their brothers at Gitmo can choke on it.

Having said this, I can understand why so many Americans are concerned that holding people for so long without trial violates the US constitution. The only solution is to give each Gitmo detainee a fair trial. If it is proven that a detainee has not committed a crime against the US, but does have ties to insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan, the detainee should NOT be released to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait!