Promising Terrorists

An Associated Press story reports that Yemen, one of the centers of terrorism worldwide, recently released 170 suspected al Qaeda terrorists after they promised to renounce terror.  This follows on the news that a Kuwaiti, Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, was released from Guantanamo Bay after 3 1/2 years and carried out a terrorist attack in Iraq that killed 7 people.  He is not the only terrorist who “renounced” violence but later went on to kill innocent people.  Abdullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban leader who spent 2 years at Guantanamo Bay and was later released in 2004 went on to kidnap 2 Chinese engineers before finally blowing himself up to avoid capture.

According to the Associated Press:

The men were freed Friday and Saturday after signing pledges not to engage in terrorism — a strategy the Yemeni government has often used with those suspected of fighting in militant causes abroad. Local tribal leaders are also expected to guarantee the good behavior of the released.

The practice stems in part from the powerful role played by the tribes across the rugged Yemeni countryside as well as the comparative weakness of the central government.

In the past, such releases have raised concern in the United States and increased its reluctance to release Yemeni detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Yemen has said it expects most of the 100 remaining Yemenis at Guantanamo to be sent home after President Barack Obama ordered the prison shut within a year.

Of course, President Barack Obama has stated that he intends to close Guantanamo Bay although of  he has not said what will take its place.  The Detention Camp, where inmates receive religiously sensitive meals, free health care, and other benefits is far nicer that the accommodations captured Westerners like Daniel Pearl had (Pearl was beheaded in a jihadist video).  In fact, the biggest problem many Guantanamo Bay inmates may face is getting fat.

In the U.S. justice system even people who commit petty crimes are generally not released because they “promise” not to do it again meanwhile countries like Saudia Arabia and Yemen routinely take the word of a terrorist and offer them release.

What kind of a crazy world do we live in where dangerous people who have comitted terrorist activities are, after having been captured, released because they promise not to do it again?  President Obama chose the passion of rhetoric in saying he could close Guantanamo Bay over the facts of reality.  And, even if the U.S. does release some of these people back to their home countries, many of them are not going to be welcome so what will Obama do then?  They will probably end up in limbo… too dangerous to release, unable to return to their own countries.  Sort of like what we have now.

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