January 13, 2009

ACLU Defense Department "Fear Mongering" Over Dangerous Gitmo Detainees

Via IHT:

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from its military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as "returning to the fight" and 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by the Defence Intelligence Agency.

But the ACLU and Human Rights Watch argue that the pentagon did not release enough "evidence" or that that the detainees are considered active in the fight for "speaking out".
"Until enough information is provided to allow the press and the public to verify these claims, they need to be viewed with a healthy degree of scepticism," said Jennifer Daskal, a Washington-based lawyer for Human Rights Watch.

Rights advocates contend that many Guantanamo detainees have never taken up arms against the United States and say the Defence Department in the past has described former detainees as rejoining "the fight" because they spoke out against the U.S. government.

"The Defence Department sees that the Guantanamo detention operation has failed and they are trying to launch another fear mongering campaign to justify the indefinite detention of detainees there," said Jamil Dakwar, human rights director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Consider the case of Abdullah Salih al Ajmi, he was just making al-Qaeda propaganda in Iraq after his release from Gitmo. In fact, he was the star player in an al-Qaeda in Iraq video . In the video he blows up himself, the truck he was driving and 13 Iraqi soldiers. Another 42 Iraqi soldiers and civilians were injured as he made his "propaganda".

Bill Roggio has the background and the video here.

I guess he was just "speaking out"? Maybe the ALCU has become so busy protecting the rights of foreign terrorists that they just forgot about the Iraqis right to, you know, breathe?


By Howie at January 13, 2009 04:09 PM | | l digg this