Leftists who hate Israel can rejoice; their efforts at securing the release of a Gitmo detainee and their subsequent lionizing of him allowed him to murder five Israelis in the bombing Wednesday in Burgas, Bulgarian. The bomber has been identified as Mehdi Ghezali, who was detained at Gitmo Bay in Cuba from 2002 to 2004.
According to Wikileaks documents, Ghazali was “uncooperative, unforthcoming and deceptive during interrogations.” His father had met with Abdolrahman Barzanjee, an Al Qaeda associate and possible Ansar Al-Islam coordinator for Europe (Ansar Al-Islam is a group of Sunni Muslims trying to turn Iraq into an Islamist state), and Ghazali was friends with a Swedish operative who was a close associate of Abu Zubadayah, a high-ranking official with Al Qaeda.
Ghazali, who was a Swedish citizen, was visited by members of the Swedish government frequently while he was in custody at Gitmo, and the Swedish media played up his incarceration. While Ghezali was detained at Gitmo, he was featured in the documentary Gitmo – The New Rules of War, a film that savaged Guantanamo Bay detention camp by film directors Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh.
In February of 2004, Ghazali was reassessed and regarded as an enemy combatant who had gone to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, but although Gitmo concluded that he was a “medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US its interests and allies,” the decision to release him to Sweden followed: “Recommendation: JTF Gitmo recommends that this detainee be transferred to the control of another country for continued detention.”
