President Obama admitted yesterday he’s worried that terrorists released from the Guantanamo Bay military prison will resume attacks against America, even as Saudi Arabia revealed that six of its most wanted jihadists are former Gitmo inmates.
“Can we guarantee that they’re not going to try to participate in another attack? No,” Obama told NBC News.
“But what I can guarantee is that if we don’t uphold our Constitution and our values, that over time, that will make us less safe. And that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like al Qaeda,” he said.
Obama last month ordered the Gitmo detention center in Cuba closed within a year, arguing it was a symbol of torture and human-rights abuses of its detainees.
But the new administration has yet to figure out where it will put the suspected enemy combatants, promising a plan in six months.
A Gallup poll yesterday showed 50 percent of voters oppose the decision to close Gitmo and 44 percent support it.
“Is it going to be easy?” Obama asked of the dilemma over dangerous detainees. “No, because we’ve got a couple hundred of hard-core militants that, unfortunately, because of . . . some problems that [we] had previously in gathering evidence, we may not be able to try in ordinary courts, but we don’t want to release.”
Pentagon officials said they believe there are now 61 released Gitmo detainees who rejoined al Qaeda and the Taliban to fight against the United States and its allies.
In total, about 7 percent of those transferred from US custody have returned to terrorist activities, the Defense Department said. There are some 250 suspected jihadists currently held at Gitmo.
Two former detainees have even been involved in suicide attacks.
Abdullah Salih al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti national, killed seven people in a suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq, in April 2008 – three years after being sprung from Guantanamo.
Abdullah Mahsud, from the south Waziristan tribal region in Pakistan, directed a suicide attack that killed 31 people in his homeland in April 2007. He blew himself up to avoid capture by Pakistan police three months later.
Mohammed Ismail from Afghanistan was released from Gitmo in 2004 when he was 15 years old and was recaptured a few months later for taking part in an attack on US forces near Kandahar.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which has battled domestic jihadists for years, released a list of 83 suspected terrorists who are fighting overseas, including six released from Gitmo.