Barack Obama is making good on his campaign promise to release Guantanamo detainees. It took a good long while, but he's finally doing it. After all, he only has a year left in office to do as much damage as he possibly can. What this means is we are essentially adding to the ever increasing pool of terrorists who want us dead or living under Shariah law.
Muhammad Abd Al Rahman Awn Al-Shamrani. The 40-year-old is being shipped back to Saudi Arabia. He's already promised to kill Americans if released. You can be sure he will.
On January 6th, Al Qaeda-linked detainees Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalif Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby were released from the Guantánamo Bay detention center. On January 8, Faez Ahmed Al-Kandari, another Al Qaeda-linked detainee who was suspected of working as a jihadi recruiter and expert propagandist, was released.
Now ten more Yemeni terrorists have been released. The ten will be sent to Oman. Sean Hannity has a breakdown and photoa on each individual. Click here.
According to a CNN news report- yes CNN- almost 50 percent of the rebels now fighting in Syria are jihadists or hardline Islamist extremists, which means there is a 50/50 chance that the weapons headed to Syrian rebels from the West will probably wind up in the hands of al-Qaeda rebels. Even if there was a way to ensure that weapons were only supplied to the secular fighters (which there isn't), they could still easily end up in the hands of jihadists either through force (which has happened), or simply while fighting side by side.
No doubt the percentage of jihadists will increase over time as more foreign fighters crawl into Syria.
Remember that Austrian and Finnish couple that were kidnapped from an electronics store in Sanaa,Yemen late last year? And the al-Qaeda-linked captors even had the Austrian, Dominik Neubauer, plead for his life on video in February, 2013 in exchange for particular ransom demands? Lucky for them, they have finally been freed on the border of Oman.
No details other than residents in Hawf, the village on the Oman border where they wound up, helped free them.
“The three hostages were released overnight Wednesday and they are now with Omani authorities,” said the official on condition of anonymity.
“They were kidnapped by al-Qaeda militants,” the official added.
[snip]
There was no immediate confirmation from Oman about their whereabouts.
At the end of March, the foreign minister of Finland held talks in Sanaa with President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi about the fate of the hostages.
[snip]
Most kidnappings of foreigners in Yemen are carried out by members of its powerful tribes who use them as bargaining chips in disputes with the central government.
Hundreds of people have been abducted over the past 15 years. Almost all have been freed unharmed.
I'm thinking they will think twice about traveling to the hell holes of the world.
There are certain countries in the world that should be off limits to anyone with a brain and no pressing need to travel there. In this day and age, many of those are located in the greater Middle East. Some might have been considered relatively safe for tourists prior to the Arab Spring, but not so much any longer. And with al-Qaeda's rise to prominence in some of those countries- Yemen comes to mind- one would think that people would cross those places off their bucket list, but no. I'm sure three people right now are wishing they had done so.
It seems an Austrian and Finnish man, and a Finnish woman are the latest kidnapping victims of al-Qaeda. This time in Yemen. Apparently the three were allegedly abducted by AQAP in Sanaa as they were about to head on down to the southern port of Aden. The south happens to be a haven for al-Qaeda In The Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), they have kidnapped many before, including Saudi Diplomat Abdallah al-Khalidi who has not been seen since March, but this obviously was not a deterrent to the fearless three.
But these abductions are not recent events. Back in 1998 a bunch of tourists were kidnapped and some killed in the battle between Yemeni troops trying to rescue them and the militants holding them hostage. The UK still advises its citizens not to travel there. So does Australia and the U.S., and I would venture to say most countries have similar travel advisories.
The two males were in Sanaa supposedly studying Arabic. Couldn't they have signed up for Rosetta Stone, or at least found a less dangerous location to learn Arabic? They do exist. And the female had just arrived in Yemen. An incredibly stupid place for a woman to travel alone, though I assume she must have known the other Finn.
According to a Yemeni official, in a bid to free imprisoned fellow militants al-Qaeda had said they would abduct foreigners and "stage bank hold ups."
Although I hope the three are freed, they have no-one to blame but themselves.
No-one wants Omar Ahmed Khadr, the 25-year-old Canadian al-Qaeda murdering terrorist (of Egyptian ancestry), who was captured after a deadly firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was a baby-faced 15 year-old teen. Most of his time since then has been spent in Guantanamo, but the U.S. wants him out and is ready to send him back after a plea deal was reached in 2010 allowing him to serve the rest of his short sentence in a facility in Canada. The trouble is, the Canadians don't want him there either.
According to an interview on Sun News with U.S. Forensic Psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Welner, Khadr was evaluated back in 2010 (at the behest of the Pentagon) to determine just how dangerous he really was, and the results were not at all promising. Khadr, wants to go home and "become a contributing member of our society," so says his lawyer, John Norris, but Welner has 73 reasons why Khadr still poses a danger to Western society, including the fact that:
1. he has no remorse for his terrorist activities, including killing a U.S. soldier 2. he bragged about killing SFC Christopher Speer 3. tests revealed Khadr as an angry and manipulative young man 4. Khadr has not been de-radicalized, even though his defense team recommended it as recently as 2009 5. the Imam they wanted to help him de-radicalize (who has called President Obama a "house slave") is a radical himself 6. he's actually not eligible to enter a de-radicalization programme because his family is highly radicalized.
Yes, papa Ahmed was also allegedly a terrorist (or at the very least a sympathizer) until he was killed alongside other al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan in 2003; and several of his brothers also have extremist tendencies. In fact, even mama Khadr is very anti-Western, which is why the Khadr kids were often shuttled back and forth from Canada to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Khadr supposedly worked for several charitable NGOs. Even though mama Khadr thinks Western society turns kids into gay, drug addicts, she's back living in Canada. I guess she had no problem with the Afghan opium trade, and the gay Pashtuns.
I'd like to think that people are redeemable, but religious extremists (especially Muslims) don't easily let go of their fanatical ideology, and the recidivism rate for radical Muslims (especially former Guantanamo detainees) is apparently very high.
So what will happen to Omar? Canada will reluctantly repatriate him, he'll serve out the rest of his sentence there, he'll be back out on the streets, and soon ship off to Yemen to join his Qaeda buddies.
We shall see.
