Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Joined Iraq Suicide Attack (Washington Post)

[TrumanB]

Of course, this is all George Bush's and Dick Cheney's fault. Hell, let's just let them all go. :doh:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/07/AR2008050703456.html?hpid=moreheadlines

By Josh White

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, May 8, 2008; A18

A Kuwaiti man who complained about maltreatment during a three-year stay in the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was involved in a deadly suicide bombing in northern Iraq last month, the U.S. military confirmed yesterday.

Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, 29, whom the U.S. military accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan and wanting to kill Americans, was involved in one of three suicide bombings that killed seven Iraqi security forces in Mosul on April 26, Defense Department officials said.

They said that after his release in Kuwait, Ajmi traveled to Iraq via Syria -- a common way for foreign fighters to enter Iraq through porous borders. Military officials said Ajmi's motives were unclear, but in a lengthy martyrdom audio recording before his death, Ajmi implores people to take part in suicide bombings to attack Americans.

In portions of the recording translated by the Bethesda-based SITE Intelligence Group, Ajmi decries the conditions at Guantanamo as "deplorable" and urges others to fight.

"Whoever can join them and execute a suicide operation, let him do so. By God, it will be a mortal blow," Ajmi says. "The Americans complain much about it. By God, in Guantanamo, all their talk was about explosives and whether you make explosives. It is as if explosives were hell to them."

The suicide bombing is the first such attack in Iraq linked to a former Guantanamo detainee, though the Defense Intelligence Agency has estimated that as many as three dozen former Guantanamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of having returned to terrorist activities.

International human rights groups and lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have disputed that estimate, saying only a handful of former detainees have left U.S. custody and gone on to fight U.S. forces.

"Our reports indicate that a number of former Guantanamo detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention," said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. "As these facts illustrate, there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo."

Approximately 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo or transferred to other governments since the facility opened in January 2002. Of the 270 who remain, about 65 more detainees have been cleared for release or transfer.

Ajmi was held at Guantanamo until late 2005, when he was transferred to the custody of the Kuwaiti government as part of a diplomatic arrangement. In hearings at Guantanamo, Ajmi maintained his innocence and said he never fought with the Taliban or meant anyone any harm.

He also said he did not have a "grudge" against his American captors -- a claim belied by his later martyrdom statements. In the audio clip, accompanied by a propaganda video with an image of Ajmi and a young child, Ajmi said detainees were "like guinea pigs for experiments."

Referring to one detainee at Guantanamo -- Yasser al-Zahrani, a Saudi national -- Ajmi said that the detainee used to stand up for other detainees "every time a soldier or an officer hurt us" and that he "took revenge for us." The Defense Department reported that Zahrani died in June 2006, when he allegedly took part in a coordinated suicide with two other detainees, an act that defense officials called an asymmetric attack on his captors.

Ajmi disagreed, saying: "The Americans killed him and said he hanged himself."

In 2006, Ajmi was tried in a Kuwaiti court, along with a group of other alleged terrorists, but was acquitted and released. Defense officials said he apparently had been living a "productive life" in Kuwait since his release, and an attorney for him in the United States said yesterday that Ajmi had fathered a child shortly after returning home.

But Thomas Wilner, a Washington lawyer who represented Ajmi in seeking a habeas corpus hearing during his stay at Guantanamo, said yesterday that Ajmi was young and not well educated, and that he appeared deeply affected by his incarceration at the U.S. facility.

Ajmi told Wilner in five 2005 meetings that he had been badly abused after his capture in Afghanistan and later at Guantanamo, at one point coming to a meeting with a broken arm Ajmi said he sustained in a scuffle with guards.

Wilner said that over the course of the visits, Ajmi became "more and more distraught . . . about the way he was treated and the fact that he couldn't do anything about it." Wilner called the suicide bombing a "horrible tragedy" and a result of the absence of appropriate legal processes at Guantanamo. "All we sought for him was a fair hearing, a process, and he was released by the U.S. government without that process," Wilner said.

"The lack of a process leads to problems. It leads to innocent people being held unfairly and not-so-innocent people going home without any hearing. The [u.S.] government decided to release this guy, and why, we'll never know," Wilner added.

[twa]

why, we'll never know,"????

Hardly

Ya'll were played like a drum by lawyers selling out,as is detailed here

visit the link for much more.

http://www.911familiesforamerica.org/?p=36

The true story of Mr. Mutairi’s journey, from the uprising in Qala-I-Jangi to Guantanamo Bay’s military detention camp to the privileged life of an affluent Kuwaiti citizen, is one that his team of high-priced lawyers and the government of Kuwait doesn’t want you to know. His case reveals a disturbing counterpoint to the false narrative advanced by Gitmo lawyers and human-rights groups–which holds that the Guantanamo Bay detainees are innocent victims of circumstance, swept up in the angry, anti-Muslim fervor that followed the attacks of September 11, then abused and brutally tortured at the hands of the U.S. military.

Mr. Mutairi was among 12 Kuwaitis picked up in Afghanistan and detained at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. Their families retained Tom Wilner and the prestigious law firm of Shearman & Sterling early that same year. Arguably, it is Mr. Wilner’s aggressive representation, along with the determined efforts of the Kuwait government, that has had the greatest influence in the outcome of all the enemy combatant cases, in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. The lawsuit filed on their behalf, renamed Rasul v. Bush when three cases were joined, is credited with opening the door for the blizzard of litigation that followed.

According to Michael Ratner, the radical lawyer and head of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the center received 300 pieces of hate mail when the organization filed the very first Guantanamo detainee case in February of 2002. The shocking images of 9/11 were still fresh; it would be three more months until most human remains and rubble would be cleared from ground zero. There was no interest in Guantanamo from the lawyers at premium law firms.

But by 2004, when the first of three detainee cases was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, the national climate had changed. The country was politically divided, the presidential election was in full swing, and John Kerry was talking about treating terrorism like a criminal nuisance. The Guantanamo cases gave lawyers a chance to take a swipe at the president’s policies, give heroic speeches about protecting the rights of indigents, and be a part of the kind of landmark legal cases that come along once in a lifetime. The Guantanamo Bay Bar increased from a lonely band of activist lawyers operating out of a run down office in Greenwich Village to an association of 500 lawyers. Said Mr. Ratner about the blue chip firms that initially shunned these cases, “You had to beat the lawyers off with a stick.”

Mr. Wilner and his colleagues at Shearman & Sterling were the exception, although he has been exceedingly coy about the true nature of his firm’s role. Unlike the many lawyers who later joined in the litigation on a pro bono basis, Shearman & Sterling was handsomely paid. Mr. Wilner has repeatedly stated that the detainees’ families insisted on paying Shearman & Sterling for its services and that the fees it earned have been donated to an unspecified 9/11-related charity. According to one news report, the families had spent $2 million in legal fees by mid-2004. In truth, Kuwaiti officials confirmed that the government was footing the bills.

How did Shearman & Sterling get tapped for this historic assignment? Speaking at Seton Hall Law School in fall of 2006, Mr. Wilner recounted that he visited the facility at Guantanamo Bay in 2002, months before he met the Kuwaiti 12’s families. What was Mr. Wilner doing at Gitmo more than two years before Rasul established the legal basis for lawyers getting access to detainees inside the camp? One of his Gitmo legal colleagues has said that Mr. Wilner was brought into the case by an oil industry client.

It turns out that Shearman & Sterling, a 1,000-lawyer firm with offices in 19 cities all over the world, has substantial business dealings on six continents. Indeed, Shearman’s client care for Middle Eastern matters has established a new industry standard: The firm’s Abu Dhabi office states that it has pioneered the concept of “Shariah-compliant” financing. In Kuwait, the firm has represented the government on a wide variety of matters involving billions of dollars worth of assets. So the party underwriting the litigation on behalf of the Kuwaiti 12–from which all of the detainees have benefited–is one of Shearman & Sterling’s most lucrative OPEC accounts.

Shearman & Sterling did far more than just write legal briefs and shuttle down to Gitmo to conduct interviews about alleged torture for the BBC. In addition to its legal services, the firm registered as an agent of a foreign principal under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) as well as the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA) to press the Kuwaiti detainees’ cause on Capitol Hill. Shearman reported $749,980 in lobbying fees under FARA for one six-month period in 2005 and another $200,000 under the LDA over a one-year period between 2005 and 2006. Those are the precise time periods when Congress was engaged in intense debates over the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act, legislation which Shearman & Sterling and its Kuwaiti paymasters hoped would pave the way for shutting down Guantanamo permanently and setting their clients free.

Mr. Wilner, a media-savvy lawyer who immediately realized that the detainee cases posed a tremendous PR challenge in the wake of September 11, hired high-stakes media guru Richard Levick to change public perception about the Kuwaiti 12. Mr. Levick, a former attorney whose Washington, D.C.-based “crisis PR” firm has carved out a niche in litigation-related issues, has represented clients as varied as Rosie O’Donnell, Napster, and the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Levick’s firm is also registered under FARA as an agent of a foreign principal for the “Kuwaiti Detainees Committee,” reporting $774,000 in fees

[Larry]

why, we'll never know,"????

Hardly

Ya'll were played like a drum by lawyers selling out,as is detailed here

visit the link for much more.

And you're point is "it's all some lawyer's fault"? Or have I missed it?

[twa]

And you're point is "it's all some lawyer's fault"? Or have I missed it?

Lawyers are responsible for a massive PR blitz that enabled the releases and will continue to do so...But NO it is our fault for buying the snow job.

Too busy to read the link?

[BigMike619]

calling sarge..sarge report please..

[WVUforREDSKINS]

/..............................

[WVUforREDSKINS]

calling sarge..sarge report please..

I think he's on "vacation"

[BigMike619]

too bad...we could have all of these terrorists killed and get back to things that matter like confederate flags and demotivational posters..lol

[WVUforREDSKINS]

why, we'll never know,"????

Hardly

Ya'll were played like a drum by lawyers selling out,as is detailed here

[Larry]

Lawyers are responsible for a massive PR blitz that enabled the releases and will continue to do so...But NO it is our fault for buying the snow job.

Too busy to read the link?

Nah, but I figured that if the link had anything really relevant to this thread or your point, you would have quoted it.

(And, I'll admit that, frankly, I don't expect a whole lot of unbiased information on a web site named "911 families for america".)

And the point of your second post is? "People who look like Arabs have been released"?

[twa]

I don't know why I bothered, good night

Enjoy the news over the next few months,if you have time.

[Larry]

I have to admit to being surprised.

I expected that this thread would be gathering about 15 posts an hour from people (on "both sides") insisting that their own blanket generalities were clearly proven correct because that assumed that this case fits the pattern they're looking for.

I really didn't respond, myself, because frankly, my feelings are (as they ofter are) conflicted.

But I really expected that the thread would be full of such hyperbole that I'd wind up being drawn into arguing with somebody, anyway.

I'm glad it hasn't happened. But I've got to admit to being puzzled, too.

[alexey]

This certainly flies in the face of those who claimed that everybody in Gitmo were innocent.

[PeterMP]

I have to admit to being surprised.

I expected that this thread would be gathering about 15 posts an hour from people (on "both sides") insisting that their own blanket generalities were clearly proven correct because that assumed that this case fits the pattern they're looking for.

I really didn't respond, myself, because frankly, my feelings are (as they ofter are) conflicted.

But I really expected that the thread would be full of such hyperbole that I'd wind up being drawn into arguing with somebody, anyway.

I'm glad it hasn't happened. But I've got to admit to being puzzled, too.

They're BAD all BAD. KILL THEM.

(happy now?)

[helptheSKINS]

And you're point is "it's all some lawyer's fault"? Or have I missed it?

You need to replace "some" with "all" and you'll be all set. I'm always here to help Larry

[GibbsFactor]

Turn that place into a glass parking lot!!!!

:whoknows:

Wait, did any American's die in this bombing?

We have successfully converted our first double agent!!

[USS Redskins]

Well, not all terrorists are bad people - maybe he was just one of those bad apple terrorists that get all nasty and make trouble, giving terrorists a bad name.

[BigMike619]

Well, not all terrorists are bad people - maybe he was just one of those bad apple terrorists that get all nasty and make trouble, giving terrorists a bad name.

yeah, unlike those terrorists that just go quietly about their business being polite and respectful before blowing up churches and shopping malls. :laugh:

[Predicto]

This certainly flies in the face of those who claimed that everybody in Gitmo were innocent.

Who claimed that around here? I can't think of a single person who ever said anything like that. Not even close.

I also found this line of the story interesting...

"The suicide bombing is the first such attack in Iraq linked to a former Guantanamo detainee..."

Given that many thousands of people have passed through Gitmo so far, I'm surprised it isn't more.

[HogNose]

Just another reason why we should have gassed them all when they got to Guantanamo. We give them Koran's, let them turn towards Mecca and they still don't behave.