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Why Did the Bush Administration Send Hardcore Terrorists Back to Al-Qaida?By Evan Kohlmann
One of the most troubling aspects of the recent explosion of activity by Al-Qaida in Yemen (otherwise known as "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula") is the role being played by Saudi nationals who are former detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At least eleven former Saudi Gitmo prisoners who were sent back home by the Bush administration between 2003-2007 have promptly rejoined Al-Qaida in Yemen -- including individuals who made no secret of their intentions upon being released. The biographies of these men are all included in my NEFA Foundation report from earlier this year, "The Eleven: Saudi Guantanamo Veterans Returning to the Fight.” I reprint the conclusions of my report here: In at least four of the eleven cases-Fahd al-Jutayli, Murtadha Magram, Adnan al-Sayegh, and Ibrahim ar-Rabeish-ARB panels in Guantanamo Bay specifically found that the men continued to represent "a threat to the United States and its allies" only months prior to their transfer from custody in Gitmo back home to Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, it is almost inexplicable that the U.S. government would even consider releasing, albeit, a mid-ranking Afghan-trained Al-Qaida recruit such as Yusuf al-Shehri-who has happily advertised to his interrogators that "he considers all Americans his enemy" and that "he will continue to fight them until he dies"-except under the most stringent of conditions. Or, alternatively, we have the case of Murtadha Magram-who boasted that had gone "to the jihad to die", that he "wanted to be a martyr for the cause", and that he "hates Americans and all non-believers." These hardly sound like obvious choices for early parole from Guantanamo... In at least one regrettable instance, if the account of the New York Times is to be believed, a terror suspect now thought to be quite dangerous (Mishal al-Shedoky) was released and sent home to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo, primarily in order to help win Saudi political support for the botched U.S. invasion of Iraq.That's correct: the U.S. military repeatedly warned the Bush administration in advance that almost half of the former Saudi Gitmo detainees who have rejoined Al-Qaida continued to represent active threats to the United States--and yet they were released anyway, evidently for political reasons. There are serious questions here that must be immediately addressed by those within the former Bush administration responsible for this inept decision-making process.
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