BUSH'S RELEASED GUANTANAMO DETAINEES ARE NOW AL-QAEDA TERRORISTS! America's War Criminal Never Gave A Shit About Your Security!
Unviable Tissue Mass
allowing, the pants-on-fire fool to board the Detroit-bound plane --
in Europe!
People killed by that Umar guy? Zero.
But they conveniently ignore George W. Bush, your foremost unindicted
WAR CRIMINAL, on whose watch the 9/11 terrorists killed 3,000
Americans, NEVER was concerned about national, or citizen, security.
His main effort was in fomenting FEAR in the U.S., the better to keep
Repugs and other right-wingers under his thumb!
His chief henchpeople?
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Bremer, Rice, Wolfowitz, Franks, and, yes,
Cringin' Colin Powell!
---------
"Former Guantanamo detainees fuel growing al-Qaeda cell"
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 30, 2009; A03
SANAA, YEMEN -- Former detainees of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, have led and fueled the growing assertiveness of the al-Qaeda
branch that claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day
bombing of a U.S. airliner, potentially complicating the Obama
administration's efforts to shut down the facility.
They include two Saudi nationals: the deputy leader of al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, Said Ali al-Shihri, and the group's chief
theological adviser, Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish. Months after their
release to Saudi Arabia, both crossed the kingdom's porous border into
Yemen and rejoined the terrorist network.
Shihri and Rubaish were released under the Bush administration, as was
a Yemeni man killed in a government raid this month while allegedly
plotting an attack on the British Embassy. A Yemeni official said
Tuesday that the government thinks he is the first Yemeni to have
joined al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula after being released from
Guantanamo.
That a group partially led by former Guantanamo detainees may have
equipped and trained Nigerian bombing suspect Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab is likely to raise more questions about plans to
repatriate those prisoners to Yemen. Six were released last week; 80
Yemenis are now left at Guantanamo, nearly half the remaining detainee
population. Many are heavily radicalized, with strong ties to
extremist individuals or groups in Yemen, said U.S. officials and
terrorism analysts.
Republicans have in recent months urged the Obama administration to
rethink sending detainees to Yemen. They have cited al-Qaeda's growing
footprint in the country, its instability and the case of Maj. Nidal
M. Hasan, who is charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex.,
after exchanging e-mails with a radical Yemeni American cleric.
"This is a very dangerous policy that threatens the safety and
security of the U.S. people," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.).
A senior Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said al-Qaeda has used the prison "as a rallying cry and
recruiting tool." Closing the facility, the official said, "is a
national security imperative."
A second administration official said the government had little choice
with the six detainees released last week. A federal judge had already
ordered one to be released. The officials said the government
concluded it did not have enough evidence to win against the remaining
five in hearings in which the detainees had challenged their
imprisonment under the doctrine of habeas corpus. The prospect of
losing in federal court is likely to trigger other releases, the
official said.
"We do not want a situation where the executive is defying the
courts," the official said. "That's a recipe for a constitutional
crisis."
Wolf, who did not object when the Bush administration repatriated 14
Yemeni detainees to their homeland, said that "conditions in Yemen
have dramatically changed" with the emergence of al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula. Wolf added that he had access to classified
biographies of the six Yemenis sent back last week.
"Did they read the bios? They are dangerous people," Wolf said.
A third administration official, also speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said the Yemenis sent back had been carefully screened to
assess their potential for being recruited by al-Qaeda upon their
return. He also expressed confidence in the Yemeni government's
ability to handle their reintegration: "We have been exceptionally
pleased with the dialogue and cooperation with Yemen over the last 11
months."
The Yemeni former Guantanamo detainee who joined al-Qaeda was among
four suspects killed by Yemeni forces in a Dec. 17 raid north of the
capital, according to a Yemeni official and a human rights activist.
Hani Abdo Shaalan, who was released from the U.S. facility in June
2007, and three other suspected militants were planning to bomb the
British Embassy and other Western sites, said a Yemeni official who
was briefed on the operation.
Shaalan, 30, had traveled to Afghanistan by way of Pakistan in July
2001. He was searching for work, according to his Combatant Status
Review Tribunal. He eventually found work as a chef's assistant in a
Taliban camp and was at Tora Bora during the U.S. air campaign there.
Pakistani forces captured him in their country, near the Afghan
border.
Human rights lawyer Ahmed Amran, who assists the repatriated
detainees, said Shaalan's family reported his disappearance last year.
After their release from Guantanamo, Shihri and Rubaish, both of whom
trained and fought with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, were sent to a Saudi
rehabilitation program that uses dialogue and art therapy to reform
militants. In February, the Saudi government released a list of 85
most wanted Saudi terrorists. At least 11 were graduates of the
program, including Shihri and Rubaish.
Shihri, now 36, became al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's deputy
leader after the Yemeni and Saudi Arabian branches of al-Qaeda merged
in January. Rubaish, now 30, is the branch's mufti, or Islamic
scholar, responsible for religious guidance and theological
justification for committing violence.
Another former Guantanamo detainee, Mohammed al-Awfi, was one of the
merged group's key field commanders for months. He, too, had gone
through the Saudi rehabilitation program, then fled to Yemen along
with Shihri. In January, he appeared on a video by the group
announcing that he had joined al-Qaeda. But a month later, his
relatives in Saudi Arabia persuaded him to surrender to Saudi
authorities.
Yemen has struggled with its handling of former militants.
A prison-based rehabilitation program was widely considered a failure.
Graduates had no follow-up support, and many later traveled to fight
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some were thought to have taken part in a
September 2008 al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen that
killed 16, including six assailants.
Other suspects became radicalized inside Yemeni prisons and joined al-
Qaeda, according to human rights activists. All the surviving
suspected al-Qaeda militants involved in the 2000 bombing of the USS
Cole in the southern city of Aden, which killed 17 American sailors,
have either been released by Yemen's government or escaped in a 2006
jailbreak from a maximum-security prison. Among those who escaped was
Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the current leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula.
Yemeni officials say they are capable of rehabilitating detainees but
lack the resources.
Amran, the human rights lawyer, said that he does not know why Shaalan
joined al-Qaeda but that the government needs to improve its
reintegration programs. "The Yemen government doesn't assist
detainees. No employer wants to hire them without a guarantee," said
Amran, who works for the Yemeni group Hood. "If there's no help for
the detainees, they will join al-Qaeda."
[Staff writer Peter Finn and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed
to this report.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122902289.html