Taliban Guantanamo Grad takes the easy way out

Abdullah Mehsud, Guantanamo Class of ’04, decided it was better to blow himself to smithereens than to end up in a Pakistani prison according to the Globe and Mail;

Abdullah Mehsud, 31, spent over 2 years in Guantanamo.

Shortly after his release in March 2004, Mr. Mehsud shot to prominence by kidnapping two Chinese engineers working in South Waziristan, a region known as a hotbed of support for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

“He was killed in a house in Zhob,” Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said, referring to a district of southwest Baluchistan province neighbouring Waziristan.

A counter-terrorism squad acting on a tip-off raided the house belonging to a senior official from the pro-Taliban Islamist party of Fazal-ur-Rehman, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly.

“We asked them to surrender but they opened fire,” Mira Jan, the chief administrator for Zhob, told Reuters.

But how could this be? Abdullah signed a pledge that he’d avoid violence before he was released from Guantanamo. Surely, there’s some mistake. There’s no way those poor innocents held captive in Guantanamo could harm anyone.

From a three-year-old Reuters story;

Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to terrorism, at times with deadly consequences.

[…]

The former prisoners include Abdullah Mehsud, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee linked to Al Qaeda who oversaw the recent kidnapping in Pakistan of two Chinese engineers, one of whom was killed.

On Friday, Pakistani soldiers began a massive search for Mehsud, 28, who returned to Pakistan in March after about two years’ detention at Guantanamo. Pakistan officials say he has forged ties with Al Qaeda since then.

Oh, so there’s been a massive search for Abby since 2004. From a BBC profile of Abby;

In a telephone interview with the BBC in 2004, Mehsud told our correspondent that he led his fighters by example by taking risks and surviving in tough conditions.

Criticising US policies toward Muslims, he said the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was a provocation for the followers of Islam and must be avenged.

So what do we do now? Now that we’ve suddenly, just today, learned that terrorists don’t keep their word? What’s the alternative to Guantanamo since we can’t imprison thugs and apparently we can’t release them on their own recognizance. What do the brilliant human rights advocates on the Left suggest we do?

Seems we have a tiger by the tail.

Category: Foreign Policy, Legal, Politics, Terror War