Real Estate Bank Owned Distressed Properties,
Short Sales and more
Florida Foreclosures
California
Foreclosures
Nevada Foreclosures
New York Foreclosures
|
Guantanamo Bay Released Afghan Prisoner who is
now a Top Taliban Leader in Afghanistan
Abdullah Rasoul was one of 13 Afghan prisoners
released to the Afghanistan government in December 2007. Rasoul is another
example of former Guantanamo prisoners who have rejoined militant groups and
taken action against U.S. interests. Pentagon officials said that as many as
60 former detainees have resurfaced on foreign battlefields.
Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir. He is in charge of operations
against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan.
Intelligence officials said he has emerged as a key militant figure in
southern Afghanistan, where violence has been spiking in the last year.
Thousands of U.S. troops are preparing to deploy there to fight resurgent
Taliban forces.
This underscores the Obama administration's dilemma in moving to close the
detention camp at Guantanamo and deciding what to do with the 250 prisoners
who remain there.
In one of his first acts in office, President Barack Obama signed an
executive order to close the jail next year. The order also convened a task
force that will determine how to handle remaining detainees, who could be
transferred to other U.S. detention facilities for trial, transferred to
foreign nations for legal proceedings or freed.
More than 800 prisoners have been imprisoned at Guantanamo; only a handful
have been charged. About 520 Guantanamo detainees have been released from
custody or transferred to prisons elsewhere in the world.
A Pentagon tally of the detainees released show that 122 were transferred
from Guantanamo in 2007, more than any other year.
The Pentagon's preferred option is to hand them over to their home
governments for imprisonment. But the Defense Intelligence Agency's growing
list of former prisoners that have rejoined the fight shows that, in some
cases, that system does not work.
According to the Pentagon, at least 18 former Guantanamo detainees have
"returned to the fight" and 43 others are suspected of resuming terrorist
activities. The Pentagon has declined to provide a complete list of the
former prisoners they suspect are now on the battlefield.
According to case documents assembled by the U.S. military for a 2005 review
of Rasoul's combatant status at Guantanamo, the Afghan was captured in 2001
in Konduz.
Armed with a gun and sitting in the car of an alleged Taliban leader, Rasoul
insisted to American authorities he was forced to carry the gun by the
Taliban. Rasoul told the tribunal in 2005 that in fact he had surrendered
with other Taliban members to the Northern Alliance in Konduz on Dec. 12,
2001.
The Northern Alliance was involved in a protracted civil war with the
Taliban, and was allied with U.S. forces in the October 2001 invasion.
Rasoul told the tribunal that he and others were then handed over to the
Americans for bounties.
According to the U.S. documents, Rasoul was conscripted into the Taliban in
1995, and was seriously wounded in a bombing in 1997. He returned to the
Taliban in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in 1999.
Rasoul, who hailed from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan_ a Taliban
stronghold_ never attended a Taliban or al-Qaida training camp. A key piece
of evidence against him was that he was captured with two Casio watches
similar to those used in al-Qaida bombings. He said he was holding the
watches for a Taliban member who lacked pockets.
He told the tribunal that he intended to return to a peaceful life in
Afghanistan.
"I want to go back home and join my family and work in my land and help my
family," he said, according to a U.S. military transcript of the hearing.
National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said that at least two Saudi
detainees also turned up recently as members of al-Qaida in Yemen after they
were released from Guantanamo. The Saudis had been handed over by the U.S.
to Saudi Arabia, where they were supposedly rehabilitated as part of a Saudi
program to reform extremists.
But he told the House Intelligence Committee last month that the prison must
be closed because of the damage it has done to America's reputation. It is
too powerful a negative symbol to remain open, he said.
The jail at the U.S. base in Cuba, created by the Bush administration in
2002, has been criticized worldwide for allegations of abuse of prisoners
and their legal status.
Drudge Report |
Politico
| World Net Daily | Judicial Watch
| News Max | Front Page Magazine
Media Research |
Accuracy In Media | CNS News | Town Hall |
CBN | Push
Back | Cato Institute
American Spectator |
Heritage Foundation | Roll Call | Friends of Liberty | National Review
Rush Limbaugh |
Hugh Hewitt | Bill O'Reilly |
Bob Novak
| Laura Ingraham |
Glenn Beck
John Loftus | Pat
Buchanan | Michael
Savage |
Chuck Morse
| Neal Boortz | Bill Gertz
Ann
Coulter | Cal Thomas |
Dennis
Praeger |
Rusty Humphries
|
Ann Coulter Chat Room
Video News Current Events,
Alternate Energy, Immigration, Politics
Conservative News Videos
Multi-ethnic, illegal immigration advocacy group operating to support
enforcement of the law Minutemen
Opposes efforts to use federal immigration policies to force mass U.S.
population growth and depress wages of vulnerable workers.
Numbers USA
Israeli News
Jerusalem Post |
Arab News Saudia Arabia Daily |
Free World Now
White House Press
Briefings |
New York Post
New American |
Free Republic | Citizens United
Conservative Union
| Sia News | Insight Magazine
|
Rewards For Justice | FBI Web Site
| ATF
US Dept of Defense | US Navy | US Marines | US Air Force | US Army | USA Freedom Corps
American Legion | Center For Disease Control
|
Health & Human Services
|
news.google.com |
Lasik Eye
Surgery Info
Diets, discount vitamins
Vitamins
Health Nutrition
Casinos, Discount Hotels
Las Vegas Here
Travel, Clothing, Gifts
Shopping Discounts
|
