Good thing we’re closing Guantanamo and giving these poor innocents a new chance at life, eh? Gitmo Recidivism Update, and more on this story: “‘Guantánamo Swede’ arrested in Pakistan,” from The Local, September 11 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):
One of the three Swedish nationals arrested nearly two weeks ago in Pakistan is Mehdi Ghezali, a former terror suspect who was released from the United States’ Guantánamo Bay prison in 2004.
According to Sveriges Television (SVT), it was Ghezali, along with two other Swedes and several other foreigners, who was arrested by police in Pakistan on suspicions the group had ties with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.
“We confiscated a laptop and $10,000 they had with them,” said a spokesperson for the Pakistani military, according to the Expressen newspaper.
The arrests took place at a checkpoint in Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab province, when the group was reportedly on its way to southern Waziristan, a stronghold for the Taliban in Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.
The now 30-year-old Ghezali, a resident of Örebro in central Sweden, was arrested in December 2001 and put in custody of the US military shortly after the start of the campaign in Afghanistan.
He spent more than two years in a prison for terror suspects set up by the American military on its base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Ghezali, dubbed in the Swedish media as the “Guantánamo Swede”, was never put on trial nor was he told why he had been detained. He was released from the prison in July 2004, whereupon he returned to Sweden….