al Qaeda

al Qaeda, Gitmo, Guantanamo, jihadists

Will our federal courts release al Qaeda out in America on bail?

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Will federal courts release al Qaeda on bail onto American streets? “No way,” you say. Think again.

The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) of the remaining 270 Guantanamo detainees found them to be enemy combatants yet Defense Department officials only plan on prosecuting about 80 of that number. Many of the home countries of about 125 detainees allegedly approve of torture and no country seems to want the other 65 enemy combatants said to be “eligible for release.”

Despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently stating that, “We are stuck with Guantanamo,” both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have indicated they will close it down.

Ladies, gentlemen, and children of all ages, al Qaeda is coming to America on your dime — like it or not. Make no mistake, some Americans like the idea a lot; the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Guantanamo Bay Bar Association have worked for six years to bring al Qaeda’s killers here, to a federal court and jail near you.

A few Justices on our Supreme Court have taken a liking to European law and releasing al Qaeda terrorists on bail in Europe has become fairly common. The Times Online (UK) cites the most recent example:

Abu Qatada, the radical Muslim cleric described as one of Osama bin Laden’s right-hand men, was freed from jail last night under some of the most stringent bail conditions ever imposed by a British court. A judge ruled that there were no grounds to detain Abu Qatada, 47, after previous attempts to deport him were defeated in the courts. The decision by Mr Justice Mitting at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) to release the Jordanian-born cleric was greeted with dismay by the Government.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said that she was extremely disappointed. She said that she was appealing to the House of Lords to reverse a decision in April that it was not safe to deport him to Jordan. The Conservatives branded the decision “offensive”.

Abu Qatada, 47, who was once described as “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe” left Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire at about 8.20pm last night. He was driven out of the prison at speed in a silver Peugeot people-carrier. His last known address was in Acton, West London, where he had been living with his wife and five children. He has been ordered to wear an electronic tag and live under virtual house arrest at an address which the judge said must be kept secret.

Bizarrely, the eight-page bail order states that he is not allowed to receive visits from or communicate with 22 named individuals, including bin Laden, who has eluded US special forces for years, and Abu Hamza al-Masri, who is in prison. The cleric’s release compounds the problems facing the Government’s efforts to build a coherent strategy for deporting terrorist suspects. As many as 11 other suspects awaiting deportation hearings, including Algerians and Jordanians, are likely to rely on the precedent set by Abu Qatada’s case to keep them in Britain.

The Home Secretary and the Government face difficulties in overturning a previous decision by the Court of Appeal to refuse Abu Qatada’s deportation on the ground that it would breach human rights law.

America lacks England’s preventive detention laws yet does have lots of room for al Qaeda’s terrorists to get lost in plus a ‘Real ID Act’ that has been delayed until 2013 and most states are fighting.

Bet the house that if Guantanamo closes that 1) al Qaeda is coming to America, 2) al Qaeda’s lawyers will ask for bail for their clients, and 3) at least some of the jihadists that no one else will take will be released onto American streets.

Perhaps Justices Kennedy, Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer will put them all up at their places and make sure they don’t go killing any of the rest of us.

Update, 10:15 AM EDT: Releasing known terrorists within America has already been proposed by two Members of Congress.

al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Gitmo, Guantanamo, jihadists, John McCain, Political wind

Andrew Sullivan hacks for Barack Obama and the ‘innocent’ jihadists at Guantanamo

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In a post entitled ‘Why McCain Is Pushing Boumediene,’ Andrew Sullivan wrote in his blog tonight:

Defending suspected terrorists’ human rights isn’t popular [Sullivan citing WaPo’s poll that found “61 percent said non-citizens suspected of terrorism should not have these rights under the U.S. Constitution; 34 percent said they should.”] – especially when those suspects are foreign, have brown skin and speak a different language. But if most Americans fully understood how many innocents have been swept into the Bush gulag, they might be more circumspect.

Mr. Sullivan could have answered his own question and not left Americans to falsely believe that a large percentage of Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

Answer: 38 were innocent.

A mere thirty-eight out of the eight-hundred detainees taken to Guantanamo were later determined to be innocent and released.

An additional five-hundred who were known to be al Qaeda combatants (or members of other Islamic terrorist groups) have also been released. The nations that received the latter jihadists agreed to prosecute them or at least keep them from returning to the battlefield. Yet few were prosecuted (none successfully), several found ambulance-chasing lawyers in their home countries and are now suing, and nearly all returned home to a heroes welcome. Others conveniently “escaped” from their prisons such as in Yemen where several even managed to walk out the front door while the guards were busy elsewhere.

Thirty-seven — just one less than the number found to be innocent — went back to killing and trying to kill their fellow Muslims and coalition forces

Pentagon officials have confirmed that on April 29, 2008, former Guantanamo detainee Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi blew himself up in Mosul, Iraq, killing seven Iraqi police officers plus injuring twenty-nine more really innocent bystanders. Al-Ajmi was one of eight Kuwaitis from among what their propagandist lawyers and PR team dubbed the ‘Kuwaiti 12’ who were released in 2005. His family is now suing the Kuwaiti government over its issuing him a passport and allowing him to leave the country.

In addition, family members of the four remaining Kuwaitis at Guantanamo are asking that they not be released until their government can assure them they will keep their jihadist from blowing themselves up as well.

On May 9, 2008, the Wall Street Journal confirmed the numbers plus identified a couple more jihadists by name:

Ajmi’s story is hardly unique. Some 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo over the years, mostly into foreign custody. Another 65 of the remaining 270 detainees are also slated to go. Yet of all the prisoners released, the Pentagon is confident that only 38 pose no security threat. So much for the notion that the Gitmo detainees consist mostly of wrong-time, wrong-place innocents caught up in an American maw.

The Defense Intelligence Agency reported on May 1 that at least 36 former Guantanamo inmates have “returned to the fight.” They include Maulavi Abdul Ghaffar, who was released after eight months in Gitmo and later became the Taliban’s regional commander in Uruzgan and Helmand provinces. He was killed by Afghan security forces in September 2004.

Another former detainee, Abdullah Mahsud, was released from Guantanamo in March 2004. He later kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Pakistan (one of whom was shot during a rescue operation). In July 2007 he blew himself up as Pakistani police sought to apprehend him.

So, why is Mr. Sullivan misleading Americans in a blog post entitled ‘Why McCain Is Pushing Boumediene‘ about the number of innocent detainees? Answer: Andrew Sullivan, like Barack Obama, is far more concerned about the civil rights and due process of the Islamic terrorists who would gleefully murder 300 million Americans in their quest for peace through world subjugation. The short answer: Andrew Sullivan is a political hack for Barack Obama.

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Oh, by the way, full disclosure about me.