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.