SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, May 7, 2008
Ex-Guantanamo Prisoner ID'd As Iraq Bomber
U.S. Military Confirms Former Detainee Carried Out Recent Suicide Attack In Mosul
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On May 7, 2008, a spokesman for U.S. military's Central Command confirmed that former Guantanamo detainee Abdullah al-Ajmi took part in suicide attacks in Mosul. ()
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Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi took part in one of three suicide bomb attacks last month in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a military spokesman.
It appears to be the first time someone who was held at the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba has carried out a suicide attack, said a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.
Al-Ajmi, 29, was transferred in 2005 to Kuwait, where the government was supposed to ensure he would not pose a threat. In May 2006, a Kuwaiti court acquitted him and four other former Guantanamo prisoners of terrorism charges.
Dubai-based al-Arabiya television, citing a cousin of al-Ajmi, last week reported that he had carried out a suicide attack, but the U.S. military could not confirm it until Wednesday.
Rye said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that al-Ajmi's family has confirmed his death and that authorities determined he entered Iraq through Syria.
"It is unknown what motivated him to leave Kuwait and go to Iraq," Rye said. "His family members reportedly were shocked to hear he had conducted a suicide bombing."
Three suicide car bombers targeted Iraqi security forces, killing at least seven people and wounding 28 in the northern city of Mosul, local officials said. It was not yet known which involved al-Ajmi.
Military documents previously released to AP show that al-Ajmi was "constantly in trouble" while in Guantanamo and held in disciplinary blocks during his detention. He also allegedly told officials in August 2004 that "he now is a jihadist, an enemy combatant, and that he will kill as many Americans as he possibly can."
Tom Wilner, a lawyer who represented Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo, said al-Ajmi had a broken arm during one of their meetings at the base in Cuba and that he alleged he had been injured by guards who interrupted him while he prayed.
Wilner called the alleged suicide attack a "tragedy" that could have been avoided with court hearings for prisoners held at Guananamo, where the U.S. now holds about 270 men.
"The lack of a process results in tragic mistakes on both sides," the lawyer said.
American officials have said in the past that more than a dozen former Guantanamo prisoners engaged in hostilities against U.S. forces or its allies, an assertion that critics have challenged.
In other developments:
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- Come on. When will we learn. Muslim = held and tortured in Guantanamo Bay for 3 1/2 years without legal rights would make almost any normal person angry and want to strike back at the illegal detention by the US Governement. It wouldn''''t take much to convince them to do this.
Posted by jboxton at 01:28 PM : May 09, 2008 - Reply to this comment
- cornbiker- HILARIOUS!!! O&A reference?
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- Come on. When will we learn. Muslim = terrorist. Why do they keep acting suprised when they find out the suicide bomber was a member of their family. Muslims are uneducated easily tricked dolts who have weak minds. It wouldn''t take much to convince them to do this.
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- pzabbie
I am glad someone with real knowledge mof the situation has been able to comment on this situation. If it saves American lives i don''t care how many of the enemy we have to torture to get information. I am against the war in Iraq but we still have to fight the terrorists. - Reply to this comment
- Yo lo veo asi:
Pillamos unos cuantos arabes, los metemos en un avion y alli los levamos a la carcel ilegal de Guantanamo. Los volvemos locos y luego los soltamos en Iraq.
Estos se vengan haciendo atentados. Y asi justificamos la presencia militar en un pais donde no habia armas de destruccion masiva y que ya no tien el dictador. Pero del que queremos el Oil y montar bases militares para controlar a Rusia y China. - Reply to this comment
- Good job libs for fighting Gitmo. Everyone there should be tortured for info and then exterminated like the vermin that they are.
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- Nancy_Naive--Remember when they were reporting a couple of years ago that many of the cars used in the bombings were stolen in the US? Always associated the trade in stolen vehicles across the US border to Mexico that Frank Sturgis was associated with decades ago....as if the insurgents couldn''t find some rolling shrapnel in Iraq to place explosives in...
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- As pressure has built to close the Guantanamo concentration camp, it would be in the interest of the Regime to get some positive PR about the necessity of keeping their victims caged up forever.
Reading the article, we come away with no idea as to why he was incarcerated for 3 1/2 years...just for "terrorism". Do we have any kind of post-mortem reports? The results should have come back immediately if so much as a fingerprint were entered into the system. The lag in time between the alleged bombing and the naming of the suspect leads one to the conclusion that the fellow was simply murdered and then accused.
I wouldn''t think that the best way out of Camp G would be to tell the people who had been torturing you that you were a jihadist and were going to kill lots of Americans...seems a bit at odds with the whole theme and spirit of the place...
It would have been suspicious indeed if he had been released directly from Gitmo and then, like a Manchurian candidate, blew himself and others up...did he actually kill any Americans in his alleged suicide bombing?
Instead he is given up to our ally Kuwait who released him and then he ends up in Mosul? Why? What happened in between?
The propagandists paint a picture and leave out a whole bunch of information that might raise questions about the Regime''s slant on the bombing. - Reply to this comment
- It is not a suprise when prisoners - especially prisoners who have been brutally abused - subsequently commit violence against others and or themselves.
No points are scored for confirming this tragic phenomena.
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Posted by CBS_Oliver at 08:03 AM : May 08, 2008
LIBS are sooo funny. - Reply to this comment
- CATCH HIM and kill him dead!
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- Hey brianbwb,
I have a stepson, who has served at Gitmo for almost 3 yrs. Do you know what I have learned? There is not one single detainee at our Cuban facility who would not hesitate to kill you, your wife, and your child; even your mother, given the first opportunity. And do you know why? Not because they have been imprisoned, but simply because you are American. They felt this way before they got there, (that%u2019s why we put them there, dumba**), and they will feel the same til they die. The sooner the better, I say. - Reply to this comment
- U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000
by Patrick Quinn
AP: In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.
"It was hard to believe I''d get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release %u2014 without charge %u2014 last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."
Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.
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Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.
Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers'' photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it''s an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.
Every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.
But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.
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Building for the Long Term
Reports of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates. Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress positions and other abusive techniques.
The same day, President Bush said the CIA''s secret outposts in the prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from them sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure of such trials.
Living conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The U.S. military cites the toilets of Bagram, Afghanistan: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.
Whatever the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist. - Reply to this comment
- Paul Rieckhoff
A Historic Vote
Last week I told you about a press conference in which leading Republicans and Democrats got together to call for a new GI Bill. And I said we''d have to wait to see if action was going to follow up those words. Tomorrow, we find out.
Congress has a historic choice to make. The House of Representatives is set to vote on a World War II-style GI Bill for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as an amendment to emergency supplemental war funding bill. And lawmakers will have to go on record as to whether they truly support our nation''s newest generation of veterans.
The 21st Century GI Bill (S.22/H.R.5740) was originally introduced in Congress by some of the Senate''s own combat veterans, including Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel. This bill has the extraordinary bipartisan support of 57 Senators and 278 Representatives and the endorsement of every major Veterans Service Organization from the American Legion to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). About ten pieces of legislation in Congress today have that kind of bipartisan support -- and half of those bills authorize new stamps and coins. That a bill of this magnitude has such overwhelming support is almost unheard of.
(CONT) - Reply to this comment
(CONT)
This legislation would substantially increase the educational benefits available to service members who have served since September 11, 2001. It would cover the cost of tuition of up to the most expensive in-state public school and provide a living and book stipend, so new veterans can focus on their educations and readjusting to civilian life. The new GI Bill would also provide more equitable benefits to National Guardsman and Reservists, who have made up about a quarter of our fighting force in Iraq. And educational benefits would be linked to the cost of college, so they would keep their value over time. It is, in short, the right thing to do for the men and women who have made such a tremendous commitment to our country.
The momentum for a 21st Century GI Bill has been incredible. But it''s time to finish the job. Tomorrow, we urge every member of Congress to vote "yes" on GI Bill funding and show unanimous support for our troops.
Help us get the word out. IAVA is encouraging its national membership to call their lawmakers and tell them to vote "yes" on the GI Bill. For more information on this critical issue, please visit www.GIBill2008.org.- Reply to this comment
- omg are yall serious,, you think this guy was inprisoned for no fn reason? You think his detention created his amosity towards his so called enemys? The guy should of been caught shot and hacked to pieces. brianbwb you my friend are a fkn idiot and people like you make suicide bombings like this possible.
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- brianbwb
Yes 60% of prisoners are black but the statistic of committing 60% of the crimes is also true. In the case of bell they are yelling racism and there isn''t a white involved. The officers were black and Mexican. The judge made his decision based on the facts presented to him in the case. The only time sharpton or jackson show up is when they can make a buck. They hurt the righetous causes of the blacks because their reputationbs precede hem every time. It is a fact they are racists agaionst whites. Jackson was one of the founders of the black pantheers which advocates the killing of whites. You can''t get more racist than that. - Reply to this comment
- "Btw this Reverand Wright that hates America so much, lives in a 5 million, 20k square foot home. All bought and paid for by the dummies that follow him. ONLY IN AMERICA!" Posted by corey2444
Again incorrect, look at the Catholic and Protestant churches, and Jewish synagogues world-wide, you will see even more elaborate housing for the ministers of various faiths, how much do you think the Vatican cost? - Reply to this comment
- "AND WHO ARE YOU TO SAY THIS GUY WASN''''t A TERRORIST AND WOULND''''T HAVE DONE THIS IN 2003?" Posted by corey2444
Who is to say that you are not a terrorist, and may do this in 2009? Should we lock you and your family up without charges, and torture you for what you "might" do in the future? - Reply to this comment
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
