UPDATE: Officials deny that the jihad murderer was a Gitmo detainee.
Not only is Ghezali a demonstration of how Islamic antisemitism all too often is manifested in blood and murder; he is also a vivid illustration of how the Left's vociferous opposition to anything and everything that the U.S. does to defend itself kills people. I wonder if Leftist lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith, who assured authorities that other Gitmo detainees deemed dangerous were actually harmless, will have any comment on this. (I knew Clive slightly when we were both students at the University of North Carolina; Clive, if you're reading this, send me an email at director[at]jihadwatch.org: I'd love to interview you about Mehdi Ghezali and Guantanamo.)
Note also the role that mainstream media whitewashing of Islamic jihad played in this: instead of alerting Swedish citizens to the danger Ghezali posed, The Local downplayed his jihad activity -- and no doubt smeared anyone who tried to sound the alarm as a greasy Islamophobe.
"Anti-Israel Bomber in Bulgaria Was Released From Gitmo Thanks To Left," from Breitbart, July 19 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
Leftists who hate Israel can rejoice; their efforts at securing the release of a Gitmo detainee and their subsequent lionizing of him allowed him to murder five Israelis in the bombing Wednesday in Burgas, Bulgarian. The bomber has been identified as Mehdi Ghezali, who was detained at Gitmo Bay in Cuba from 2002 to 2004.According to Wikileaks documents, Ghazali was “uncooperative, unforthcoming and deceptive during interrogations.” His father had met with Abdolrahman Barzanjee, an Al Qaeda associate and possible Ansar Al-Islam coordinator for Europe (Ansar Al-Islam is a group of Sunni Muslims trying to turn Iraq into an Islamist state), and Ghazali was friends with a Swedish operative who was a close associate of Abu Zubadayah, a high-ranking official with Al Qaeda.
Ghazali, who was a Swedish citizen, was visited by members of the Swedish government frequently while he was in custody at Gitmo, and the Swedish media played up his incarceration. While Ghezali was detained at Gitmo, he was featured in the documentary Gitmo – The New Rules of War, a film that savaged Guantanamo Bay detention camp by film directors Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh.
In February of 2004, Ghazali was reassessed and regarded as an enemy combatant who had gone to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, but although Gitmo concluded that he was a “medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US its interests and allies,” the decision to release him to Sweden followed: “Recommendation: JTF Gitmo recommends that this detainee be transferred to the control of another country for continued detention.”
He was released to Sweden on July 8, 2004. And guess how much he meant to the Swedish? He was flown home to Sweden by the Swedish Air Force on a Gulfstream IV jet, at the expense of the Swedish government.
Ghazali joined a July 4, 2006 demonstration held outside the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay facility.
But the liberal Swedes weren’t done with nurturing Ghazali yet. He was arrested in September of 2009 in Punjab, Pakistan, on suspicions of having ties to al-Qaeda; Pakistani police chief Mohammad Rizwan described Ghezali as "a very dangerous man". But the Swedish newspaper The Local described his actions as "a harmless meeting with a Muslim revivalist movement, Tablighi Jamaat."
One month later, Ghezali was released to Sweden. The Swedish Ambassador even accompanied him on the flight home.
With all the help Ghezali received from the liberal media and liberal governments, it’s obvious they have blood on their hands. But the blood is Israeli, so don’t expect the Left to shed a single tear.
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SHAME ON SWEDEN for willful blindness and for the nurture of this vile asp!