Wednesday, March 24, 2010

US judge orders release of 9/11 recruiter

The insanity continues. From The Long War Journal:

US judge orders release of 9/11 recruiter


Slahi-OBL-Binalshibh-Atta.jpg

From left to right: Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Mohammed Atta.

A US federal judge has ordered the release of a top al Qaeda recruiter for the 9/11 attacks from custody at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was identified by the 9/11 Commission as a key recruiter of al Qaeda’s Hamburg cell, was ordered to be released from the prison by US District Judge James Robertson, according to The Wall Street Journal. Slahi was also allegedly an important facilitator of the failed millennium bomb plot at Los Angeles International Airport in 1999. Robertson’s ruling on Slahi’s detention has not been disclosed, and is currently classified.

Slahi is known to have recruited several al Qaeda operatives before his detention in Mauritania in November 2001. His most high-profile recruits were the top members al Qaeda’s cell in Hamburg, Germany -- the key planners and operatives of the 9/11 attack. He was “a significant al Qaeda operative,” who was “well known to U.S. and German intelligence,” according to the 9/11 Commission’s final report.

While in Hamburg in 1999, Slahi arranged for Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the key facilitators of the 9/11 operation, and three of his cohorts to travel from Germany to Afghanistan so that they could train in al Qaeda's camps and swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Binalshibh's three friends were: Mohammed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah--the suicide pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and United Airlines Flight 93, respectively.

Binalshibh, Shehhi, and Jarrah met with Slahi in late 1999. Slahi convinced the three terrorists to travel to Afghanistan for training instead of rushing off to Chechnya to fight the Russians. Slahi told the operatives to obtain a Pakistani visa and then provided instructions on “on how to travel to Karachi and then Quetta, where they were to contact someone named Umar al Masri at the Taliban office,” according to the 9/11 Commission....

There is much more detail, here.

I suppose this is one way of BHO keeping his campaign promise to close GITMO. I know I am not the only one who sees this as no way to ensure our safety from future terrorist attacks. The insanity continues.


No comments: