 The four members of China's Muslim Uighur minority began working last week to help prepare the lush, seaside Port Royal course to host the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in October. The hiring raised eyebrows in the British territory, where employers can only take on foreigners if no qualified local wants the job. Wendall Brown, chairman of the board of trustees for Bermuda's public golf courses, said the men replaced a group of Filipino workers who left at short notice. "They have been offered a temporary position at Port Royal until the Grand Slam," he said.
"There are still special projects that we need to do like cleaning up and beautifying the course ... All four of them have been given a job there. It's on a temporary basis. Two of them speak fairly good English." Mr Brown said the men were likely to still be working there during the two-day Grand Slam tournament, when golf's greatest champions of the year will be pitted against one another on the 18-hole course. Port Royal head superintendent Steve Johnson said the Uighurs were doing well in their ground staff roles. Their lawyer in Bermuda identified them as Khalil Mamut, Abilikim Turahun, Abdullah Abdulqadir and Salahidin Abdulahat, and said they had been known by a series of nicknames during the seven years they were held at the detention camp for suspected terrorists on the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their imprisonment continued long after the US military and courts determined that they posed no threat. The United States said it could not send them to China because they faced persecution there, but US politicians blocked plans to settle them in the United States. The four landed on the 21-square-mile island on June 11 after Bermuda's premier, Ewart Brown, negotiated their resettlement directly with the United States. The move enraged the United Kingdom, which insisted the Bermuda government did not have the power to handle such foreign affairs and security matters. Britain and the United States are still in talks about the men's future. Expatriates make up a third of the work force in Bermuda, which has a population of 65,000 and requires permits to work. Mr Brown said the golf course worked with immigration officials to get the men permission to work. Source: The Australian
 THE first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be transferred to US soil arrived early today in New York to face terrorism charges, the Justice Department said. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an Al-Qaeda suspect from Tanzania held at Guantanamo since 2006, arrived at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre to face charges over his alleged involvement in the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa.
He was expected to make his first appearance in a Manhattan federal court tomorrow, according to Attorney General Eric Holder.
"With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people," Mr Holder said.
"The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case."
Ghailani faces 286 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder, bomb and maim, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against US nationals, charges for which he could receive the death penalty.
According to the indictment from March 2001, Ghailani also conspired with Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other Qaeda members to kill Americans.
Expectations had grown in recent weeks that Ghailani would be the first Guantanamo inmate to be brought to US shores and tried in a civilian court.
President Barack Obama has vowed to close by January 2010 the Guantanamo detention centre which still houses about 240 "war on terror" inmates, most of whom have been detained since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The US leader hopes other countries will take in some of the 50 detainees so far cleared for release. An Algerian national has been taken in by France, while an Ethiopian-born British resident was returned to Britain, but finding homes for the others has proven to be difficult.
Many leaders of countries who called for the facility to be shut down have refused to harbor its former inmates, and the US Congress has opposed moves to let them stay in the United States.
Mr Obama is under intense pressure to decide the fate of the detainees from 30 nations at the camp, many of whom have not been charged.
Some may be impossible to try, as their evidence may be inadmissible in court due to interrogation methods branded by critics as torture, but may also be deemed too dangerous to release.
Last week Canada turned down Washington's requests to take in Guantanamo detainees, becoming the third US ally to put a snag in efforts to shutter the infamous prison.
Ottawa last month turned down a US request to take in three of 17 Chinese Muslim detainees cleared for release from the US naval base in southern Cuba because of "significant security concerns," Canadian immigration ministry spokesman Alykhan Velshi said.
Germany and Australia also have been urged to take in Guantanamo inmates, but both have appeared reticent.
  By Clare M. Lopez With all the recent attention focused on where and how to release Guantanamo Bay detainees, the case of 17 imprisoned Uyghurs has grabbed headlines again. Massachusetts Democratic Congressmen Jim McGovern and Bill Delahunt think that at least some of these Uyghurs should be resettled right here in the United States (U.S.), maybe even in the Virginia suburbs. Speaking in late May 2009 at a world assembly of Uyghurs at the U.S. Capitol, Delahunt offered some reassuring words: “The Uyghur people are not enemies of America. In fact, I know you admire our fundamental ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….” How quaint. And how dangerously wrong. The Uyghurs held at GITMO were captured while fleeing a terror training camp in eastern Afghanistan that was run by the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), a splinter faction of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). ETIM is listed as a terrorist organization by the governments of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and the U.S., as well as the United Nations. The TIP may also be another name for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an Islamic terrorist group opposed to the secular regime of Uzbekistan President Islom Karimov and dedicated to the establishment of Islamic rule there and across Central Asia. Heavily suppressed in Uzbekistan, the IMU may have been eradicated inside that country, but its fighters have surfaced in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and elsewhere. Many of them joined the Taliban in Afghanistan pre-2001 and remain a presence in terrorist training camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Read more ...Source: FSMJim McGovern
Bill Delahunt
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Two lawmakers of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party appealed Thursday to let Uighurs locked up at Guantanamo Bay move to the United States, saying they were victims of injustice. The plea came despite an overwhelming Senate vote a day earlier to block money to transfer inmates out of the deeply controversial "war on terror" prison in Cuba, which Obama on Thursday vowed again to shut down. US authorities four years ago cleared 17 imprisoned Uighurs -- members of a largely Muslim group in northwestern China who the State Department says face worsening persecution by Beijing. But they are stuck at Guantanamo Bay due to fears that Beijing would torture them if they return. The United States has asked Germany, home to a large Uighur community, to take them in. "We cannot expect the world to miraculously resolve this problem of our own making," Congressman Jim McGovern said. Read more ...Source: AFPJim McGovern
Bill Delahunt
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 How would you like your family’s next-door neighbor to be a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who was trained in a military camp in pre-9/11 Afghanistan? Would it matter if they were declared no longer to be an “enemy combatant” by the Pentagon? That’s the fundamental question that ought to be going through the minds of Northern Virginia residents this week, amid news reports - including our own Daily News exclusive today - that a group from Gitmo may soon be making house in the D.C. suburbs. Officials tell The News the ethnic Turk Muslims from China, known as Uyghurs, will be settled in a Uyghur community in Fairfax, Va. - if Team Obama gives the thumbs up. While Republicans have unarguably been making political hay out of this news - as well as the release of the Bush-era “torture memos” and President Obama’s plan to close Gitmo by January - they are indeed representing the views of many counterterror officials by objecting strenuously to plans to resettle a half-dozen former detainees in the D.C. suburbs. “There are people in the intelligence community who are concerned about the Uyghurs from a security standpoint,” Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), ranking GOPer on the Homeland Security Committee, told The Mouth. “They have very real worries.” Read more ...Source: NY Daily NewsH/T: Jihad Watch
 A Virginia Congressman wants President Obama to declassify and release publicly all information about a group of Chinese Uyghurs who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for more than seven years, but who may be released soon and allowed into the U.S. In a letter dated Friday, U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) wrote of "grave concerns" he had about the possible release of the Uyghurs, who were detained after being captured in an Afghan training camp. Last fall, an appeals court blocked a lower court order that would have prompted the men's release and admission to into America. While the administration has made no formal decision, news reports indicate some of the 17 Uyghurs who have been in Guantanamo could be sent to America, perhaps to Virginia suburbs that have a Uyghur community. Before that happens, Wolf wrote, the public deserves a full accounting of the men's background: "Information I have received indicates that the Uyghurs may be more dangerous than the public has been led to believe. I write today asking that you declassify all intelligence regarding their capture, detention, and your administration's assessment of the threat they may post to Americans, prior to any decision to release them. The American people deserve to have all the facts about these individuals before they should be expected to tolerate their presence in our communities." Wolf also wants the Administration to explain how it will monitor the Uyghurs once they were released, something he called a "moral obligation" for the Administration: "The American people cannot afford to simply take your word that these detainees, who were captured training in terrorist camps, are not a threat if released into our communities." See Wolf's letter to the President here. Source: IPT News
Jihadists are about to be freed and transplanted to American towns — maybe even yours.By David J. Rusin Scan any list of the most tasteless television series ever produced and you are bound to stumble across the 1990 British sitcom Heil Honey I’m Home! A spoof of 1950s-era comedies, the show depicts Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun enjoying a life of suburban bliss — until they begin tangling with their Jewish neighbors. Public outrage condemned it to the ash heap after just one episode. What premise could spark a similar firestorm in 2009? Perhaps some crass young screenwriter drawing inspiration from his forebears might propose a series about Islamic jihadists, freshly released from a high-security American jail, who move to suburbia and find themselves face to face with Jews or liberated women — or, Allah forbid, liberated Jewish women — in the house next door. Oh, the zany adventures they could have on Heil Honey I’m Home (from Gitmo)! Read more ... Source: Pajamas MediaObama Administration
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WITH US President Barack Obama due to ask Kevin Rudd to commit more Australian troops to Afghanistan, it’s time to consider whether there are too many civil liberties. In the simple land of moral absolutes inhabited by so many progressives and civil libertarians, just about everything that George W. Bush did in his fight against terrorism was wrong. For these people, the election of Obama would recalibrate the balance between national security and civil liberties so that America could again hold its head high. Human Rights First said Obama’s decision to shut down Guantanamo Bay would “restore the moral authority and strengthen the national security of the US”. In the more complicated real world, even the man they openly call their messiah is disappointing them, given that naive absolutism is not only misconceived but downright dangerous. Detaining men at Guantanamo Bay was absolutely wrong, declared the anti-Bushies. Obama agreed, two days into his presidency signing an executive order to close down Gitmo.
Last week we learned that Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, the Taliban’s new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan, was a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner released to the Afghan Government in December 2007. Now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, he’s commanding areas where the violence has been ramped up in recent months. In January it was reported that another former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, Said Ali al-Shihri, had emerged as deputy leader of the al-Qa’ida network in Yemen. According to US officials, al-Shihri, allegedly involved in the bombing of the US embassy in Sana’a last year, and released from Gitmo in 2007, was handed over to the Saudi Government and entered a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists. Nice idea. Didn’t work. It turns out you can count on the Taliban and al-Qa’ida to spot the real talent. There’s not a whiff of branch stacking, no insertion of party hacks when they choose their jihadist leaders. Instead, it’s all about merit. That sees the likes of Rasoul and al-Shihri taking up a leadership role to impose a warped Islamist ideology on large swaths of the globe. Gitmo was not the perfect solution. These terrorists were released under the watch of the Bush administration because it’s not easy identifying terrorists. But closing down Gitmo won’t make identifying terrorists any easier. Indeed, that dilemma has just been made harder by Obama’s promise to try to return more detainees to their home countries. Quaint notions of rehabilitation programs no doubt stroke liberal sensibilities. Yemen, the home of the single biggest group among the 250 Gitmo detainees has, with Western backing, set up Saudi-like “edification programs based on moderation to shun extremism and terrorism”. Another nice idea. But al-Shihri’s promotion up the al-Qa’ida ladder shows that releasing many of these men back to Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, undercuts not only the national security of the US but the safety of every citizen in every country targeted by terrorists. And that list grows longer by the day. It takes a sweet but rather dim-witted Pollyanna view of the world to suppose that men infused with an ideology to kill infidels and trained to do so need only spend some time in the equivalent of a detox centre to get those dirty jihadist thoughts out of their minds. These guys don’t have a drinking or drug problem. They have a killing problem. But in a society where we think we can treat every transgression, from swearing to homophobic language, with a stint in rehab, it’s no great surprise that we now think terrorists are just miscreants of a slightly nastier kind. This has always been the liberal mindset. Terrorists, we were told, ought to be treated and prosecuted as criminals in ordinary courts, because we can’t really be at war with a transnational group of religious nutters. The obsession with simple moral absolutes meant that denying habeas corpus rights to alleged terrorists caught on the battlefield was equally wrong. Liberal justices in the US Supreme Court agreed, leading Chief Justice John Roberts to declare, in dissent, that the American people had just lost “a bit more control over the conduct of this nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges”. Soldiers would henceforth have to collect evidence and take witness statements from the battlefield like a cop busting a drug ring. As Justice Antonin Scalia said in his dissent, “how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch that knows least about national security”. Then it was military commissions. They too were wrong, said the civil libertarians. Not even the US Supreme Court agreed on this one. Rendition was apparently the greatest wrong. Secret abductions and holing up prisoners in other countries signalled that Bush’s America had truly lost its moral compass. In fact, rendition was used under the Clinton administration. Moreover, Obama’s executive order closing down secret CIA sites made it clear previous rendition practices would not end. In small print, the order said that the sites closed down “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory nature”. Even Obama apparently wants, or needs, some wriggle room on rendition. Present and former US intelligence officials have said that rendition may now play a greater role as one of the few remaining tools to get suspected terrorists off the streets. “Obviously you need to preserve some tools: you still have to go after the bad guys,” said one Obama administration official. And that’s the point. Gitmo may be closed. Habeas corpus rights are back. But consider this. Our soldiers may now confront more released Gitmo detainees duly promoted up the jihadist ladder on the battlefield. And what was inaccurately regarded as the worst symbol of the Bush era - rendition - may end up becoming a more widely used tool for those enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan. Happily, all done far away from the eyes of those who still see the US President as their liberal saviour. There is no perfect, settled place to draw the line between civil liberties and national security. But those who speak in terms of moral absolutes are as dangerous as they are naive. This is not an abstract academic argument about liberal values and national security. It cuts to the core of how we protect ourselves from Islamists who waged war against us long before we noticed. The danger is that a complacent liberalism will endanger our troops and signal to the enemy that we do not have the stomach for war any more. Source: The Australian
By Ralph Peters As White House staffer Jane Austen put it to Sen. Darcy: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single terrorist in possession of a good bomb must be in want of patient understanding." Unfortunately for Washington wonks determined to deny that Islamist extremists are motivated by extremist Islam, the pride and prejudice of Allah's butchers were on public display (again) this week. Framed in florid quotations from the Koran, the Gitmo Five - hard-core terrorists, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed - proclaimed in a filing released by a brave military judge that "We are terrorists to the bone" who regard the charges resulting from "the blessed 11 September operations" as "badges of honor." Desperate to placate its blame-America supporters, the Obama administration has clamped down on news from Guantanamo. Why? After their lurid criticisms of Gitmo, the Dems now have the world's worst killers on their hands. Read more ...Source: The New York Post
 Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.)By Michael W. Chapman Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill that would prevent any of the detainees in the soon-to-be-closed Guantanamo Bay prison from being allowed into the United States. Back on Jan. 22, President Barack Obama issued an executive order mandating the closure of the prison, known as Gitmo, within 12 months. Gitmo holds nearly 250 enemy combatants from the war on terrorism. With the question in mind of where those prisoners will go, Rep. Shadegg introduced HR 1238, which would prevent anyone being held at Gitmo from setting foot on U.S. soil. “No American family should ever have to worry about their own government placing a terrorist in their community,” Shadegg said in a statement about the bill. “I have introduced legislation that would make this impossible – ensuring that the Islamic extremists at Guantanamo are not given the chance to enter our country and complete their unfinished mission of shedding American blood.” Read more ...Source: CNS NewsHon. John Shadegg
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 Binyam MohamedSeveral weeks after issuing the executive order that will close Guantanamo Bay by the beginning of 2010, it looks as though President Obama may be intent on emptying it well before the shut down date. This week, he is expected to authorize the release of UK national Binyam Mohamed, who will return to the UK once the two governments have reached an agreement. Mohmed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2004, claims to have been tortured while in U.S. custody. The media is all over his release and his allegations of torture while at Gitmo. However, they seem to be forgetting the reasons why he was taken into custody in the first place. Read more ...Source: Family Security Matters
 Susan Elbaneh was murdered by al Qaeda and apparently most of the media does not want you to know. Last week, you saw her killers’ faces splashed across the headlines yet away from her hometown, the media was busy playing echo-chamber. Strangely, the New York Times has failed to report the whole story three times. The proof of that assertion is: Robert F. Worth wrote of Susan Elbaneh’s fugitive cousin last March; he mentioned her death, name, and hometown last September while reporting on the bombing of our embassy in Yemen yet made no mention of Jaber Elbaneh; and their names and the latter’s connection to the Lackawanna Six were missing from his reports last week about two former Guantanamo detainees reuniting with al Qaeda in Yemen and their being suspected in that same attack upon our embassy. American girl Susan Elbaneh was murdered by al Qaeda and reporters from in and near her hometown actually began doing their jobs back as far as September 18, 2008: A Lackawanna High School student who traveled to Yemen to be married last month was one of the victims of a terrorist bombing Wednesday at the U. S. Embassy in Yemen, the woman’s school principal said. Attackers armed with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and at least one suicide car bomb assaulted the compound in the Yemeni capital of Sana. Officials listed the 16 people killed as six assailants, six guards and four civilians. Susan Elbaneh, 18, was killed, along with her Yemeni husband, as they stood outside the embassy, family members said Wednesday. They were apparently there to do paperwork for the husband’s move to the U. S. when the attackers struck, said Elbaneh’s brother, Ahmed. Read more ... Source: 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong AmericaH/T: Atlas
 By Bill West Last week, the Wall Street Journal offered an op-ed article detailing the difficulties facing the Obama Administration in closing the Guantanamo detention center: what to do with those detainees and how to handle terrorism suspects captured in the future on foreign battlefields by our military and intelligence services. The article notes that a possible option to solve these problems would be the Congressional creation of a new "National Security Court." Such a court would be a hybrid of federal civilian criminal courts, U.S. military courts and the Guantanamo-based military commissions. This concept has been around for a couple of years now. It was initially proposed by Andrew McCarthy, the former senior Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York who successfully prosecuted Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh," as well as the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center attack. The concept appears to have substantial merit. Theoretically, such a court would be able to try cases against terrorist enemy combatants utilizing both overt evidence and, under tightly controlled circumstances, classified intelligence evidence. The creation of a National Security Court would require the proverbial act of Congress. Read more ...Source: IPT News
January 14, 2009
THE Pentagon says that up to 61 former detainees have returned to terrorism since their release from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a big increase from its last count.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell used the new numbers to highlight the challenges of quickly closing the prison despite reports that US president-elect Barack Obama will move immediately to direct its closure.
“There, clearly, are people who are being held at Guantanamo who are still bent on doing harm to America - Americans and our allies. So there will have to be some solution for the likes of them,” he said.
“That is among the thorny issues that the president-elect and his new team are carefully considering.”
He said the Pentagon believed that, as of the end of December, 61 former Guantanamo detainees had returned to the fight, up from 37 the last time the Pentagon provided an estimate, which was in March 2008.
Of those, 18 had been confirmed as once again having become directly involved in “terrorist activities”.
Morrell said such means as “fingerprints, DNA, conclusive photographic match, reliable, verified or well-corroborated intelligence reporting” were used by the Defence Intelligence Agency to confirm those cases, he said.
The other 43 former detainees were suspected of having returned to the fight, he said.
The DIA based its suspicions in those cases on “unverified or single source but plausible reporting” or when “significant reporting indicates a former DoD (Department of Defence) detainee is involved in terrorist activities and analysis indicates the former detainee most likely is associated with a specific former detainees”, he said.
Morrell provided no detail on the specifics of the new cases, so it was difficult to tell whether a new pattern had emerged that might explain the jump.
“It may have been predicated on the fact that we... transferred out of Gitmo more detainees last year than any previous year,” he told reporters.
About 520 detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo to other countries to be held or released since the prison was established in 2002 following the US-led campaign in Afghanistan.
Morrell said more than 100 detainees were shipped to other countries from Guantanamo in 2008.
Obama acknowledged in a television interview on Sunday that it would be “a challenge” to close Guantanamo in his first 100 days in office.
But the following day, Obama transition aides were reported to have said that he would issue an executive order on his first full day in office closing the prison.
Morrell said everyone was in agreement that the prison should be closed.
“The challenge, of course, has been, for this president and for this secretary, how do you close it?” he said. Source: The Australian
 From correspondents in Paris | January 05, 2009
AL-QAEDA'S 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two alleged accomplices went on trial in Paris today, accused of plotting the 2002 suicide bombing of a Tunisian synagogue that left 21 dead.
Sheikh Mohammed is held at the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison and will be tried in absentia, but German national Christian Ganczarski and Tunisian Walid Nawar, the bomber's brother, appeared before the anti-terror court.
Sheikh Mohammed, who has confessed to being the architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, is thought to have been al-Qaeda's military commander responsible for all foreign operations.
The trial will focus on Ganczarski, a German of Polish origin who converted to Islam and allegedly played a leading role in al-Qaeda's network in Europe.
French prosecutors have charged the trio with "complicity in attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise'' and they face a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if convicted of the April 11, 2002 attack. Source: The Australian from Agence France-Presse
December 19, 2008
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has ordered aides to draw up plans for closing the "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo, a declared priority for President-elect Barack Obama, a spokesman said today.
Mr Gates wanted to be ready in case Mr Obama decides to take action on Guantanamo soon after assuming office next month, said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.
"He has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down, what will be required specifically to close it and move the detainees from that facility, and at the same time protect the American people from dangerous terrorists," he said.
"The request has been made, his team is working on it so he can be prepared to assist the President-elect should he wish to address this very early in his tenure," Mr Morrell said.
The prison, which currently has about 250 inmates, was opened in early 2002 to hold detainees captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the US "war on terror".
The prisoners include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged operational mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, as well other alleged senior al-Qaeda leaders.
In an interview on PBS television yesterday Mr Gates said, "I think we can provide alternatives to it".
"I would like to see it closed. And I think it will be a high priority for the new administration," he said on the Charlie Rose show.
But he said closing the prison will require passage of laws that would prevent dangerous detainees from being released in the United States.
"As an example, you probably want something in legislation that says if somebody is freed from Guantanamo, they don't have an automatic right to asylum in the United States," he said.
"Some of these people are very dangerous. And we don't want them coming here into the United States," he said. Source: The Australian from Agence France-Presse
By DAVID MCFADDEN GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - It's life in prison for Osama bin Laden's video maker. A jury of U.S. military officers says the Yemeni prisoner must spend the rest of his life behind bars for encouraging terrorist attacks. The jury of nine military officers deliberated for just under an hour before condemning Ali Hamza al-Bahlul at Guantanamo's second war-crimes trial. The jury found al-Bahlul guilty Monday of 35 counts of conspiracy, solicitation to commit murder and providing material support for terrorism. The military has not said where al-Bahlul will serve his sentence. Al-Bahlul refused to defend himself in what he called a legal farce and said al-Qaida won't stop attacking America. Read more ...Source: APAli Hamza al-Bahlul
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 By Stewart Bell A retired U.S. soldier who was ambushed by armed fighters holed up in the mud compound where Omar Khadr was captured said on Tuesday the Canadian deserves to be at Guantanamo Bay. Sergeant Layne Morris said he had not seen the dramatic interrogation video released by Mr. Khadr's lawyers, in which the young detainee cries for help, but he brushed off the footage as a public relations exercise. Sgt. Morris said the defence lawyers' strategy seemed to be to win sympathy for their client, and that he found it "troublesome" the public had to be constantly reminded of what Mr. Khadr is alleged to have done six years ago. " My lasting image of Omar is of him crouched in the rubble waiting for U.S. troops to get close enough so he could take one of them out, and he did that successfully and that is the underlying reason why we're all here in the first place," Sgt. Morris said. " Omar is not a kid that was just snatched up off the street somewhere and has been wrongly charged and judged unfairly. I think he is precisely where he needs to be. He's earned that stay." Sgt. Morris was serving with a Special Forces unit in eastern Afghanistan when his patrol came under fire on July 27, 2002. Pro-Taliban fighters shot dead two Afghan Militia Force troops and then opened fire on the Americans. When the gun battle ended 4½ hours later, Sergeant Christopher Speer was dead and Sgt. Morris had shrapnel wounds that would cost him his eye. The Americans shot Mr. Khadr, then 15, as they entered the compound and brought him to Bagram air base. He is now being held at the controversial U.S. military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has been charged with throwing the hand grenade that killed Sgt. Speer, although evidence has since surfaced suggesting that another fighter may have been responsible. Sgt. Morris says Mr. Khadr must have thrown the grenade because he was the only one left alive in the compound. On Tuesday, Mr. Khadr's lawyers released seven hours of video footage that showed him being questioned by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The lawyers said it was "beyond comprehension" that the Prime Minister had not yet returned Mr. Khadr to Canada. "I haven't had a chance to look at it," Sgt. Morris, who lives in Utah, said of the video, "but I guess my thoughts are that if I'm ever in trouble, that's a bunch of defence attorneys that I'd like. "They don't seem to be doing a whole lot of lawyering work. It's mostly PR work. And so it's kind of troublesome that the other side of the story has to be continually told in the media just to counter what the lawyers are trying to do in public." Sgt. Morris and the widow of Sgt. Speer, Tabitha Speer, won a $100-million lawsuit against Mr. Khadr's father, Ahmed Khadr, a suspected al-Qaeda financier killed by Pakistani troops in 2003. Their lawyer, Don Winder, said on Tuesday he had been in touch with the Canadian government about collecting from the family. Read more ...Source: Canada National PostThe Khadr Family
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Source: Fox News Lt.C. Ralph Peters
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
... Sgt. Layne Morris, who was in the firefight in which U.S. medic Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer was killed by a grenade, allegedly by Khadr, said he has no sympathy for the Guantanamo detainee.
"Whoever has sympathy for a young snivelling, whining, crying Omar is misplaced sympathy because this is not a man who deserves any sympathy," he told CBCNews.ca.
"I use all my sympathy for Chris Speer's widow and two children. I have none left for Omar Khadr."
Morris has repeatedly stated he believes Khadr is responsible for throwing the grenade that killed Speer.Source: CBCH/T: Mike's America
 By Dr. Walid Phares Jihadism in the 21 st century has plans for all types of situations, including Mujahada (Jihadi activity) in a courtroom when needed. This is now what the world will witness during the trials of the al Qaeda detainees in Guantanamo, Cuba. Both the inmates on the inside and the Jihadi-mates on the outside were waiting for this moment to strike, politically and psychologically, using the media as their weapon. To the well-trained and -indoctrinated five standing trial, the objective is not to gain as many rights and freedoms as possible under current U.S. and international law; rather it is to resume what they began before 9/11 which they deeply wish to fulfill - as they said in their own words - using the trial as a global media opportunity. This attitude has been anticipated by most experts who have followed the Guantanamo "ideological" battle, particularly the al Qaeda-Jihadist treatment of the issue. It was fully predicted that at least Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and Ramzi bin al Sheeba will take the lead in counter-prosecuting the United States and all its allies. Unlike in other comparable cases, analysts know how important it is for al Qaeda and their supporters around the world to bash the United States - and any other democracy that prosecutes Salafi terrorists - when the trials are ongoing. At that juncture, three elements will converge into one powerful force, all determined to score points against America. Read more ...Source: Family Security Matters
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