Ex-Guantánamo Bay prisoner dies in suicide attack in Iraq: Guantánamo Bay, the perfect recruitment and training camp for terrorists

There are not many happy war-on-terror stories and this one is no exception to the rule:

The Pentagon confirmed yesterday that a Kuwaiti released from the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay three years ago carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq last month. Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi and two other Kuwaitis are reported by their families to have taken part in an attack on Iraqi security forces in Mosul. Although the families did not specify a date, seven people were killed in a suicide attack in Mosul on April 26.

Civil rights lawyers claim most of the detainees are innocent, while the US military claims they present a danger and would take up arms if released. The US military opposed his release, saying there was a risk that he presented a continuing danger, but he was freed after being transferred to Kuwait.

It is easy to see why the Pentagon would be quite happy to conform this news, because now the US government can say, ‘See, we were right after all: these people are dangerous terrorists.’ In this one case they may even be right. The man in question did, according to the US army, at one defect from the Kuwaiti army to fight with the Taliban in 2001. If that is indeed true the man had, one could say, form.

This, of course, does not mean that all or even any of the other prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are also wannabe terrorists who would form a danger to the US when they were released. There are various reports that many of those who were arrested and brought to Guantánamo Bay were turned in by other Afghani either for money or for private & family-related revenge (or a combination of both.) The whole operation was quite farcical, immoral and according to most international organisations illegal from the start.

It is not unreasonable to expect that some of these men, like the alleged Kuwaiti suicide bomber, were indeed fanatics who would rather die for some dubious cause than live for a more humane one but it’s impossible to say how many of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners belonged to that select, secretive and quite demented community. At the moment though, the Pentagon and the US government as a whole will be happy enough to claim that this one case validates their whole strategy in the War on Terror, from Guantánamo Bay, to rendition flight, to their interrogation ‘techniques’ etcetera, etcetera.

The sad truth is that we never knew how many of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners were ever guilty in the eyes of any legal and honest court and by now it’s probably too late to find out. The way these men have been treated over the years makes it unlikely that any of them could reasonably be expected to be fit to stand trial.

There is, of course, yet another desperately sad bit of irony in this endlessly protracted Guantánamo Bay black farce and that is the fact that it can’t be ruled out that quite a high percentage of the prisoners have, because of their treatment, by now become so bitter and twisted that they might indeed become suicide bombers the moment they are released. If you would like to create the perfect recruitment and trainings camp for terrorists, Guantánamo Bay would be a perfect blueprint.