Gitmo grad arrested in Spain
Stars & Stripes reports that an unnamed Guantanamo detainee who was released in 2004 after two years there, was arrested in Spain for planning terrorist activities in support of ISIS.
One of those detained in Ceuta was the former Guantanamo detainee who was not named by Spanish authorities but described as “a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics.” After being captured in 2002 and held in Guantanamo, he was returned to Spain in 2004, said Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz.
[…]
The suspects had set up contacts to try to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials and were aiming “to carry out terrorist acts in Spanish territory,” the Spanish ministry statement said, without specifying possible targets.
By the process of elimination, I arrived at the name of Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad also known as Ahmad Abd al Rahman Ahmad (in the picture above, that’s him leaving Spanish prison in 2004), a Spanish national who was captured in Pakistan while he was trying to escape the American invasion in 2001 and transferred to US custody at Guantanamo in 2002. In 2004 he was released from Gitmo to stand trial for crimes against Spain. Spanish courts convicted him and sentenced him to six years in prison. The sentence was overturned because there was a possibility that the evidence against Ahmad was acquired by torture, so the Spanish released him. In 2006, two of his brothers were arrested in Spain for terrorist activities related to al Qaeda – they were recruiting and sending Spaniards to Iraq.
Category: Terror War
Yeah, incidents like this one really give me the proverbial “warm and fuzzy” regarding the GITMO “catch and release” policy the current Administration is pursuing these days.
This is my shocked face…
So according to the current klown krewe, I mean administration, all these poor misunderstood souls need is a hug and a $15 an hour job frying hamburgers, right? I PRAY for January 20, 2017 to be the END OF AN ERROR.
According to his release date, the last administration must have felt that way, also.
How so? The last administration didn’t release him into the wild. They gave him to the Spanish, who had their own punitive designs for this fucker, as he had broken more of their laws than ours. The Spanish decided to get all touchy-feely in his trial, and THEY let him go. The Bush administration didn’t do that, the Spaniards did. Now, surprise surprise, they’ve decided that wasn’t such a great idea.
To quote the great Pvt Gomer Pyle ‘Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!’
Agreed.
So the Spanish Inquisition is no longer considered an appropriate interrogation technique? Huh. Well, now what? Fetch the comfy chair instead?
Yes, this is indeed my very, very surprised face….
I favor releasing all current GITMO detainees.
Some could be released in Chicago. Natural selection will take care of them in about 30 days.
The rest of them could be released off the ramp of a C17 somewhere over the Atlantic.
I ass-u-me you’re referring to having them perform a HANO jump?
Sounds like an appropriate release to me.
At the risk of taking a Lars level ass kicking here, I will have to point out to those pointing fingers at the current administration on this one, that this guy was transferred to Spain under Bush’s “catch and release” program; a program that had a 21% recidivism rate. It is my understanding that this recidivism rate has dropped to around 5% for those released since 2009. So just from a simple math perspective I would have to say 5% of 120 is a bit better than 21% of 520.
Let the Larsesque ass kicking of OSC commence.
107 Guantanamo detainees have been confirmed recidivists, 77 more are suspected recidivists. Those numbers are from 2014 when 620 had been released. That figures to be almost 30%. No one has claimed 5% were recidivists until just now.
I was using a politifact story that was supposed to have been sourced on a DNI report. It may have been, but I had to go look at the repot itself.
According to the 2014 report, at that time 532 detainees were transferred prior to 22 January 2009 and 82 after. The number at that time that were confirmed to have reengaged in terrorist activity were 99 of 532 who had been released under Bush (19%) and 5 of the 82 released by Obama (6%). An additional 14% of the 532 were suspected of reengaging and 3% of the 82. Making the total for both administrations 29%.
So I was not the first person to float the 5% (though I got it 1% off thanks to quoting Politifact rather than looking it up myself).
A Gitmo Graduate plotting more terrorism. . . who’d a thunk it?
Inevitable with over 700 people having been detained there.
I know there can be no reasonable discussion on this issue.
GITMO has always been a legally sketchy institution. But it does hold a lot of genuine shitbags.