Bomber had been held at Guantanamo
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A Kuwaiti man freed from Guantanamo Bay carried out a suicide car bombing recently in Iraq, the U.S. military said yesterday, confirming what is believed to be the first such attack by a former detainee at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A Kuwaiti man freed from Guantanamo Bay carried out a suicide car bombing recently in Iraq, the U.S. military said yesterday, confirming what is believed to be the first such attack by a former detainee at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba.
Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi took part in one of three suicide bombings last month that targeted Iraqi security forces in the northern city of Mosul, said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a military spokesman in Baghdad. At least seven people were killed in the attacks.
Ajmi's American lawyer said incarceration at Guantanamo may have turned the Kuwaiti into a terrorist. But the U.S. military says he was already an enemy combatant when he was taken to Guantanamo in 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan.
Up to 36 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed hostilities against the United States, including some who have been taken back into custody or killed, the Pentagon said. Ajmi is apparently the first to have become a suicide bomber, said a spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.
"There is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo," Gordon told the Associated Press.
Military documents show that Ajmi, 29, had a history of discipline problems at Guantanamo, where he was held for more than 31/2 years. According to one report, he said in 2004 that "he now is a jihadist, an enemy combatant, and that he will kill as many Americans as he possibly can."
Tom Wilner, a lawyer who represented Ajmi and other Kuwaitis at Guantanamo, said that Ajmi once appeared for a meeting with a broken arm, saying he had suffered the injury when guards tried to stop him from praying.
Wilner, who met with Ajmi about five times in 2005, said he appeared "particularly angry" about being confined without charge.
"I don't know whether the experience of being kept down there in isolation radicalized him," Wilner said.
Despite his problems at Guantanamo, in 2005 Ajmi was transferred to Kuwait, which was supposed to ensure he would no longer pose a threat. But in May 2006, a Kuwaiti court acquitted him of being an al-Qaeda member and raising money for the terrorist network. The court also acquitted four other former Guantanamo prisoners.
Dubai-based al-Arabiya television last week reported that Ajmi had carried out a suicide attack, but the U.S. military could not confirm it until yesterday. Rye said that authorities determined he entered Iraq through Syria and that Ajmi's family confirmed his death.
His cousin Salem al-Ajmi told AP in Kuwait that the former prisoner had settled down and married after returning home. He and his wife had a child, with another on the way. But several weeks ago, he started disappearing for days at a time. Then, on April 30, an unknown man called another relative to say Ajmi had died in Iraq, the cousin said.
"We were shocked by the news," Salem al-Ajmi said.
