Here’s a “bombshell” from Donald Rumsfeld: terror suspects freed from Guantanamo Bay have been rejoining Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This is no surprise, really. Two weeks ago we posted a story about the same thing happening in Afghanistan. Why should it be any different at Gitmo? From the New York Daily News, with thanks to Jean-Luc:
Terrorists freed from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay have rejoined Taliban and Al Qaeda cells in Afghanistan, sources tell the Daily News.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to make the bombshell admission today in a speech in Miami, military and political sources said yesterday.But Rumsfeld’s revelation about the few prisoners in Cuba who shouldn’t have been let go will be used as justification for indefinitely detaining approximately 650 terror suspects still held there, said one defense official.
The Pentagon chief will argue for greater scrutiny of each detainee, but he’ll also “talk about the intent to release more” than the 87 freed to date, the official said.
Pentagon officials have refused to discuss one reported case of a Taliban commander, Mullah Shehzada, who rejoined comrades in Afghanistan after his release from the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba last October.
Shehzada convinced his interrogators he was an innocent civilian captured by Northern Alliance troops and turned over to the U.S., Time magazine reported late last year.
“[Shehzada] is not the only one,” said a source briefed on the speech yesterday. “They’re about to be a lot less tight-lipped about it.”
Rumsfeld is also expected to reveal that detainees have provided intelligence about human smuggling rings in Latin America aimed at sneaking Al Qaeda thugs into the U.S.