al-Ajmi

Al Qaeda made movie of Mosul murder of Muslims by ex-Guantanamo detainee (no lawyers were harmed)

Former “Lion of Guantanamo” detainee Abdullah Salih al Ajmi once wrote that he wanted to take his “lawyer, Miranda,” with him when he went. But he must of lied to the poor girl. Bill Roggio’s excellent Long War Journal report today says when al Ajmi blew himself sky high in Iraq, he murdered 13 Muslims (and apparently none of them had a law degree):

“On the morning of March 23, 2008, an Easter Sunday, a massive blast rocked the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Eight kilometers away at Forward Operating Base Marez, the US Military Transition Team for the 6th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division, prepared for the worst. The blast was so large many thought incoming rounds landed close by inside the base. But a large plume rising in the distance in the northwest made it clear a very large suicide vehicle attack just occurred inside Mosul.”

March 23, 2008, Mosul, Iraq

Before reading the rest of Roggio’s report, there is a shining example of a fool that you must see and hear, one of al Qaeda’s lawyers. On October 5, 2006, Mark Falkoff seemed pleased to be doing the closing act — starting off with al Ajmi’s poetry — of the Guantanamo Bay Bar Association’s “teach in” at Seton Hall University. Why not be pleased? Hundreds of American colleges had promoted the event, classrooms and student lounges had set up special viewings, he was streaming live acoss the Internet, and, undoubtably, sales would spike that evening. In this short Windows Media Video, Falkoff is introduced by Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux:

Mark Falkoff video

Yet ‘My Captive Lawyer, Miranda’ somehow escaped before the book went to print (see list of contents).

Currently streaming across the Internet is the video of al Ajmi blowing himself up. As it is long and just another blah, blah, blah, two booms and some bodies al Qaeda B-movie, I’ll intersperse a non-graphic sequence of his departure (with 13 innocent Muslims in tow) in with excepts from two of Bill Roggio’s reports (with his permission):

July 1, 2008, by Bill Roggio
“In early May of this year, news organizations reported a Kuwaiti carried out suicide attacks in Mosul just weeks prior. The reports were based on information from the US Department of Defense and reports from the family. Abdullah Salih al Ajmi, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay was reported to have conducted a suicide bombing at the Umm Al Rumman police station in Mosul on April 26. Seven policemen were killed and 26 Iraqis were wounded in the attack.

“The report created a stir as Ajmi is the first former detainee confirmed to have conducted a suicide attack against US forces.

“But an al Qaeda in Iraq propaganda tape released on June 23 cast serious doubt on the report that Ajmi was involved in the April 26 attack. The tape, titled “The Islamic State is Meant to Stay,” showed footage of several suicide attacks in Mosul. Towards the end of the tape al Qaeda highlights the attacks of two Kuwaitis, Ajmi and another al Qaeda bomber known as Badr Mishel Gama’an al Harbi.

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al Ajmi is in the left front. al Harbi is in the center, Click to enlarge all photos.

“Ajmi’s image is shown just prior to footage of the attack on Combat Outpost Inman. Video is then shown of the attack from the distance. Images of the aftermath of the attack taken by this journalist were then shown. Al Qaeda in Iraq is clearly stating Ajmi was behind the March 23 attack on Inman.”

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al Ajmi in a Kuwait news report photo after he was released from Guantanamo.

“Nibras Kazimi, an Iraq expert and a Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute who first reported on the tape, confirmed the footage proves Ajmi was behind the March 23 attack in Mosul. “The tape makes it clear that Ajmi performed the Harmat Apartments [the location of Combat Outpost Inman] attack,” Kazimi told The Long War Journal. “Harbi was given credit for the Umm Al Rumman attack on a police station.””

“The reason for the confusion of the identity of the bomber is unclear, but Kazimi speculated the family was in the dark on the exact date of the attack, and a name change may have added to the confusion. The press accounts reported Ajmi’s family said he was killed “weeks prior” but they did not give an exact date.

“”I think the confusion arose when al Ajmi’s family received word that their son had been ‘martyred’ in an attack in Mosul, Kazimi said. “The family did not specify the date of the attack, maybe they didn’t know themselves and people assumed that it was the April 26 attack that they were talking about.””

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“Ajmi also “changed his pseudonym from Abu Hajer al Muhajir to Abu Juhaiman al-Kuwaiti, while the pseudonym of the April 26 attacker was Abu Umar al Kuwaiti.,” Kazimi said. “So, the military folks could have heard that some ‘Kuwaiti’ was behind the April 26 and added this to what al Ajmi’s family had said, and erroneously reached the concluded that al Ajmi performed the April 26 attack.” The blast at Combat Outpost Inman was so large that the bomber’s remains were never recovered, so a DNA test was never performed.”

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“US military’s summary of evidence memo used at his hearing at Guantanamo Bay states Ajmi admitted to being a Taliban operative who went to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban. Ajmi admitted to going absent without leave from the Kuwaiti military after he was denied permission to travel to Afghanistan. Ajmi “wanted to participate in the jihad in Afghanistan.”

“Upon his arrival in Afghanistan, Ajmi was “issued an AK-47, ammunition and hand grenades by the Taliban” and fought against the US-backed Northern Alliance in the Bagram region. As the Taliban suffered defeats, Ajmi “retreated to the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan and was later captured as he attempted to escape to Pakistan.” The battle of Tora Bora was the last stand for al Qaeda and the Taliban. The terrorists covered the retreat of the senior leadership cadre, including Osama bin Laden.

“The US military determined that Ajmi was “committed to Jihad” due to his past statements, his behavior while in detention, and his activities in Afghanistan. The US military said Ajmi was “a continued threat to the United States and its allies.”

“Ajmi told his captors at Guantanamo that before his case went to trial, he wanted it to be known that “he now is a Jihadist, an enemy combatant, and that he will kill as many Americans as he possibly can.” Ajmi was “constantly in trouble” due to his “aggressive and non-compliant” behavior while in detention, the military said.”

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“Ajmi’s lawyers and supporters claim he was driven to jihad after his detention and “torture,” which has never been proven. But his supporters never answer the question as to how purported mistreatment at a US military prison justified Ajmi’s decision to carry out a suicide truck bomb attack against fellow Muslims in Iraq. Nor have they addressed Ajmi’s admission of fighting alongside the Taliban at critical battle of Tora Bora. Instead, the word of a known suicide bomber and avowed jihadist is taken at face value while the US military is blamed for the actions of a known terrorist.”

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March 23, 2008, by Bill Roggio
“MOSUL, IRAQ: Al Qaeda in Iraq pulled off a highly successful suicide truck bombing today in western Mosul. Thirteen Iraqi soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Iraqi Army division were killed and 42 were wounded after a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives and detonated it in the center of Combat Outpost Inman. Three officers and nine enlisted soldiers were among those killed. Eight other soldiers suffered serious injuries and were evacuated to Forward Operating Marez for medical treatment.

“The devastation of the attack was visible immediately upon entering the combat outpost. An al Qaeda suicide bomber drove an armored dump truck with an estimated 10,000 pounds of explosives through the gate and detonated it directly in the middle of the compound.

“The ambulance blocking the gate lay on its side. The façades of three buildings that served as the command post and barracks for the Iraqi battalion based there were shattered. Humvees, fuel trucks, ambulances, and even a Mine Resistant Ambush Vehicle, were shattered or heavily damaged. A massive crater sat between the three buildings. The Iraqi soldiers were laying out their dead and treating their wounded in the wreckage.

“Thirteen Iraqi soldiers were killed and 43 wounded in the attack. Civilians in buildings adjacent to the outpost were also wounded. Windows in buildings thousands of feet away were shattered from the resultant pressure wave.

“The blast destroyed the façades of the three buildings, including the building housing the battalion headquarters. Twelve of the Iraqi soldiers were killed on the spot, and the thirteenth later died of wounds in the hospital. Vehicles inside the outpost were destroyed or heavily damaged in the massive blast. Two ambulances were on fire, while a diesel fuel truck was twisted and lying on its side.

“Iraqi and US forces sent reinforcements to the scene to secure the area. US tanks, Bradleys, and armored Humvees surrounded the scene as Iraqi soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division entered the outpost to conduct recovery operations. Wounded soldiers were treated by Iraqi and US medics. Twenty-eight Iraqi soldiers were evacuated to the medical facility at Forward Operating Marez.

While it comes as no surprise that al Qaeda lifts copyrighted photographs to use in their propaganda, it angers many to see and hear al Qaeda’s American lawyers foolishly using the enemy’s propaganda to help set them free.

By the way, none of the defense lawyers al Ajmi saw or spoke with while in United States custody were women.

Debra Burlingame: Boumediene v. Bush a Strategic Victory for al Qaeda

Today’s Supreme Court decision, Boumediene v. Bush, is a huge victory for terrorists and a step backward in the war against radical Islamists. If 9/11 taught us anything, it is that the criminal justice system is not capable of preventing catastrophic terrorists attacks — nor is it designed to be. Never in the history of American jurisprudence have we given full Constitutional rights to terrorists captured anywhere in the world who commit atrocities on civilians.

The lawyers who are championing the rights of terrorists should tell the public what this decision really means. It means that terrorists will be entitled to Miranda rights, to legal representation and the right to remain silent. And they will. When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, was handed over to the U.S. after his capture in Karachi in 2003, he taunted his interrogators with this, “I’ll talk to you guys in New York when I see my lawyer.” But they won’t tell the public, they will continue to talk about preserving the rights of people who would behead journalists, blow up children and fly commercial airliners into buildings, as if those acts are an abstraction. What this decision ultimately means is that the vital intelligence we need to prevent future attacks — the kind of intelligence we didn’t have on September 10, 2001 — will dry up. We will be left reacting to these attacks after the fact — just as we did in the ten years prior to the murder of 3,000 of our fellow human beings.

Something else the lawyers won’t tell the public. Dealing with terrorists in the criminal justice system means that only the most clear-cut cases will result in convictions. Terrorists like Mohammed Atta, Hani Hanjour, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi, the men who piloted those planes into the WTC, the Pentagon and the ground on 9/11 would have stood a very good chance of acquittal if they were captured in an Al Qaeda training camp in the summer of 2001. The burden of proof in the civil criminal system — beyond a reasonable doubt — is extraordinarily high. Their lawyers back then would have argued that that they have no criminal history, had committed no hostile acts against the U.S. governmnent and in fact were simply religious Muslims doing charity work on holiday, the very claims Gitmo lawyers made about Abdullah Al-Ajmi and hundreds of other detainees. Al-Ajmi was released from Guantanamo in 2005. In April, he blew himself up in Iraq, killing 7 Iraqi security forces and maiming 28 others.

Justice Scalia is right that today’s opinion will result in the death of Americans. His words remind me of the beleaguered FBI agent, Harry Sammit, who pleaded with his superiors at FBI headquarters to be allowed to launch a nationwide manhunt for Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, two of the hijackers on my brother’s plane, 3 weeks before 9/11. He was turned down by the lawyers in the National Security Law Unit of the FBI, who cited the FISA law that prevented this intelligence information from being used by the criminal division. The point of that law — known as “the wall” — was CIVIL LIBERTIES protection for the terrorists who were the object of that never-launched manhunt, should they ever be caught and brought to trial. Sammit wrote in an email, on Aug. 31, 2001:

“Someday someone will die…and the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing everything we had at certain problems. Let’s hope [the lawyers] will stand behind their decisions then, expecially since the biggest threat to us now, [bin laden], is getting the most protection.”

The media can call this a “defeat for the Bush administration,” but it is not. It is a defeat for the American people. And, God help us, when the next catastrophic attack occurs under the next American president’s watch, who will the media blame then? They won’t be thinking about President Bush. The families of those who are dead will be able to draw a straight, clear line right to the steps of their own U.S. Supreme Court.

[Editor — View and save a copy of the entire decision by clicking here (pdf).]