Former detainee part of suicide attack in Iraq

WASHINGTON – A Kuwaiti man who complained about maltreatment during a three-year stay in the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was involved in a deadly suicide bombing in northern Iraq last month, the U.S. military confirmed Wednesday.

Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, 29, whom the U.S. military accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan and wanting to kill Americans, was involved in one of three suicide bombings that killed seven Iraqi security forces in Mosul on April 26, Defense Department officials said.

They said that after his release in Kuwait, Ajmi traveled to Iraq via Syria – a common way for foreign fighters to enter Iraq through porous borders. Military officials said Ajmi’s motives were unclear, but in a lengthy martyrdom audio recording before his death, Ajmi implores people to take part in suicide bombings to attack Americans.

The suicide bombing is the first such attack in Iraq linked to a former Guantanamo detainee, though the Defense Intelligence Agency has estimated that as many as three dozen former Guantanamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of having returned to terrorist activities.

International human rights groups and lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have disputed that estimate, saying only a handful of former detainees have left U.S. custody and gone on to fight U.S. forces.

Approximately 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo or transferred to other governments since the facility opened in January 2002. Of the 270 who remain, about 65 more detainees have been cleared for release or transfer.

Ajmi was held in Guantanamo until late 2005, when he was transferred to the custody of the Kuwaiti government as part of a diplomatic arrangement. At hearings in Guantanamo, Ajmi maintained his innocence and said he never fought with the Taliban or meant anyone any harm.

He also said he did not have a “grudge” against his American captors – a claim belied by his later martyrdom statements. In the audio clip, accompanied by a propaganda video with an image of Ajmi and a young child, Ajmi said detainees were “like guinea pigs for experiments.”

In 2006, Ajmi was tried in a Kuwaiti court, along with a group of other alleged terrorists, but was acquitted and released.

Thomas Wilner, a Washington lawyer who represented Ajmi in seeking a habeas corpus hearing during his stay at Guantanamo, said Wednesday that Ajmi was young and not well educated and that he appeared deeply affected by his incarceration at the U.S. facility.

Ajmi told Wilner in five 2005 meetings that he had been badly abused after his capture in Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo, at one point coming to a meeting with a broken arm Ajmi said he sustained in a scuffle with guards.

Wilner said that over the course of the visits, Ajmi became “more and more distraught … about the way he was treated and the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it.”