Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Obama administration frees convicted Al Qaeda terrorist from Gitmo and facilitates his admittance into a Sudanese rehabilitation program

Al Qaeda terrorist, Ibrahim al Qosi, worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama Bin Laden and served as the treasurer of an import-export business that served as a front for Al Qaeda. According to the summary of evidence that was presented at his tribunal, al Qosi participated in military operations against the coalition troops in Afghanistan. And now he is free as a bird and about to enter a Sudanese rehabilitation program where he is expected to gradually morph into a good Samaritan:
The United States sent home to Sudan on Tuesday one of Guantanamo's longest-held prisoners, a 52-year-old confessed al-Qaida foot soldier and sometime driver for Osama bin Laden whose release was seen as a crucial test case of the Obama-era war court. [Looks like the Obama-era war court passed the test with flying colors, heh.....]

Ibrahim al-Qosi pleaded guilty to terror charges in July 2010 in exchange for the possibility of release after serving a two-year sentence.

The Pentagon has not yet disclosed the transfer — which reduced the number of foreign prisoners at the Navy base in Cuba to 168 — to give Sudanese officials time to put the returnee in a rehabilitation program in the Horn of Africa nation. ["Rehabilitation program", right up Obama's alley!] But the repatriation demonstrated that the Obama administration is still in the business of deal-making and downsizing the prison camps. [Apparently, Obama is quite comfortable making deals with Al Qaeda members, but not with Republicans in congress, heh.....]

The White House is also reportedly considering transferring some Taliban captives at Guantanamo to Afghanistan as part of a regional peace accord there. ["Peace accord", heh......]

Although al-Qosi finished his [incredibly long 2-year] prison sentence, repatriation wasn't certain. Under Obama doctrine, like George W. Bush's before, the U.S. argues it can lawfully hold a convict indefinitely after his sentence is over by moving him out of the maximum-security Convict's Block to the communal POW-style lockup where most Guantanamo captives are held.

Instead, camp guards moved al-Qosi last week to special quarters that had a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator that let him eat at his leisure and a small outdoor gravel-topped patio, all inside a locked enclosure. [What?! No swimming pool?! ].....

Pakistani forces captured al-Qosi in December 2001, fleeing the U.S. assault on al-Qaida at Tora Bora. He was in a pack of Arab men suspected of being bin Laden's bodyguards. Al-Qosi was turned over to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, who shipped him to Guantanamo when the Pentagon opened Camp X-Ray a month later...

A side deal under seal on the Military Commissions docket cut [his] sentence to two years of confinement as a war criminal.

His return to his homeland ends more than two decades of association with al-Qaida from its earliest inception in Sudan and training camps in Afghanistan...

Among those captured with al-Qosi in December 2001 was his wife's father, Abdullah Tabarak, a Moroccan identified in leaked Defense Department documents as bin Laden's chief bodyguard...

At Guantanamo, al-Qosi had acquired a small personal library of books provided by his lawyers that included Obama's "Audacity of Hope" and Bush's "Decision Points." It was not immediately known if he was allowed to take the presidents' memoirs with him to Sudan.
But no doubt he found Obama's "Audacity of Hope" to be a much more enjoyable read than Bush's "Decision Points."....

Just a hunch, but my guess is they'll allow him to take Obama's "Audacity of Hope" with him to Sudan, but not the other book.....

Just a hunch.......

No comments: