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DoD confirms ex-Guantanamo detainee was Mosul suicide bomber

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The U.S. military command in Iraq confirmed yesterday that Abdullah Saleh Ali al-Ajmi conducted one of several suicide attacks that took place in Mosul, Iraq, last month. The attacks killed 7 Iraqis and injured 31 more:

Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, said one of the three recent suicide bombers in Mosul was al-Ajmi, “a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.”

“Al-Ajmi had returned to Kuwait following his release from Guantanamo Bay and traveled to Iraq via Syria,” Cmdr. Rye said.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that al-Ajmi is far from the first al Qaeda terrorist to go back to attacking U.S. forces and murdering his fellow Muslims:

Al-Ajmi is not the first former Guantanamo detainee to reportedly return to the battlefield after being released. Pentagon officials say there are more than 10 people once held by the U.S. at Guantanamo who have been killed or captured in fighting after being released from the detention facility.

“Our reports indicate that a number of former [Guantanamo Bay] detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention. Some have subsequently been killed in combat,” said Cmdr. Jeff Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Documents provided by the Pentagon show other former detainees returning to the battlefield, including Abdullah Mahsud, who was released from Guantanamo in 2004. He returned to Afghanistan, where he became a militant leader in the Mahsud tribe in southern Waziristan, the documents said.

“We have since discovered that he had been associated with the Taliban since his teen years and has been described as an al Qaeda-linked facilitator.

“In mid-October 2004, Mahsud directed the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan. During rescue operations by Pakistani forces, a kidnapper shot one of the hostages. Five of the kidnappers were killed. Mahsud was not among them,” the documents provided by the Pentagon said.

“As these facts illustrate, there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo,” Gordon said.

Reports of former detainees returning to the battlefield show they are dedicated to their cause and have been trained to be deceptive, the Pentagon officials said, but such factors will not prevent the release of other detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

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Al Qaeda: former Guantanamo detainee suicide bomber sent to Iraq by Iran

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The Associated Press reports:

A Sunni fundamentalist from Kuwait who has been linked by the United Nations and the United States to al-Qaida, said in an interview published Wednesday that Iran is supporting Sunni Arab insurgents fighting American troops in Iraq. The comments by Mubarak al-Bathali came just days after reports surfaced here that three Kuwaitis recently carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, including a Kuwaiti who was a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner. Kuwaiti authorities have not confirmed those reports.

The U.S. has accused Iran — which is predominantly Shiite like Iraq — of supporting Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran denies this and blames the U.S. troops presence for the violence in Iraq.

The accusations by al-Bathali were a rare occasion that a Sunni fundamentalist claimed Tehran also backs Sunni extremists, linked to al-Qaida. In the battlefields of Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites are archenemies.

In the interview in Kuwaiti Al-Qabas daily, al-Bathali said that Tehran is supplying al-Qaida fighters and other Jihad movements in Iraq with “weapons and money” and claimed he has personally sent fighters to Iraq by way of Syria.

Al-Bathali alleged that Iran’s motivation for backing both the Sunnis and Shiites opposed to Washington, was because Tehran is eager to “place hurdles in front of America” so that the U.S. would be “too busy to fight” Iran. He also said Iran facilitates the entry of fighters into Iraq and Afghanistan. “Any person who wants Jihad (holy war), is of age and responsible and honest in his intent, I send him and prepare him,” al-Bathali said. “I guarantee passage into Syria and reception there, until he finds himself in Iraq carrying a weapon and fighting.”

Al-Bathali, whose remarks were unusually bold, said he has also sent Kuwaitis to fight in Kosovo and Chechnya.

He gave no evidence of his claims and provided no further details. But he mentioned his son, Abdel Rahman, who was captured in Iraq in 2004 and sentenced there to 10 years for working with al-Qaida.

“If I had sons other than Abdel Rahman, I would have sent them to fight the Americans until doomsday,” he said in the interview. Al-Bathali could not be reached by The Associated Press for comment.

In January, the U.N. Security Council added al-Bathali and two other Kuwaitis to a list of about 480 individuals and businesses linked to al-Qaida and its sponsor the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Treasury Department has said al-Bathali is a fundraiser and recruiter for Osama bin Laden’s terror network and has facilitated travel for extremists planning to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al-Bathali told Al-Qabas that he doesn’t send fighters to Iraq through the Iraq-Kuwait border because the area beyond the boundary in southern Iraq is controlled by “Shiites and British forces.” Instead, the “easiest borders have been the Syrian and Saudi,” he said.

The U.S. has chastised Syria for allowing foreign fighters to cross into Iraq. Syria denies the charges and claims it’s impossible to seal its border completely.

Small oil-rich Kuwait has been a major Washington ally since the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War that liberated it from a seven-month Iraqi occupation. However, some of its fundamentalist Muslims disapprove of U.S. forces being based in their country or any other in the area.

Media reports have said that three Kuwaitis, including Abdullah al-Ajmi who was released from the U.S. detention facility at Guantnamo Bay in 2005, carried out suicide bombings in Iraq recently [Ed. — emphasis added mine]. The families of al-Ajmi and another alleged bomber, Bader al-Harbi, said they received anonymous calls informing them the men died in Iraq.

Al-Bathali told Al-Qabas the three left Kuwait “only after a martyrdom operation was prepared for them in agreement with coordinators” in Iraq. He did not say if he had a role in sending them himself.