Thanks, Barack!
Via Weekly Standard:
A veteran al Qaeda fighter, and an expert in document forgery who has decades of experience helping jihadists travel internationally without detection, has gone missing after being released from the detention facility at Guantanamo.
The Obama administration released the former detainee, Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Diyab, in December 2014 to Uruguay, despite the fact that U.S. military and intelligence professionals had declared him a “high risk" detainee—one who was likely to return to terrorism if freed. According to a report by Public Radio International, authorities in Uruguay have "no idea" of Diyab's current location. But they suspect that the detainee, who declared earlier this year "I like al Qaeda", has left Uruguay for Brazil.
None of this should be a surprise. Thomas Joscelyn, writing in these pages immediately after Diyab was released, noted his expertise in document forgery and his association with other al Qaeda facilitators and concluded that Diyab's contacts and experience "may come in handy if he wants to travel the world again."
Diyab was one of six detainees released to Uruguay—five of them "high risk" detainees—in what ought to go down as one of the most shameful moments of the Obama administration: A foreign leader slandered U.S. military and intelligence professionals, and the Obama administration not only said nothing in their defense but thanked and praised the man who smeared them.
On December 7, 2014, an American military airplane delivered six Guantanamo detainees to Uruguay. Two days earlier, Jose Mujica, the president of Uruguay, denounced the United States and accused the U.S. government of crimes against humanity. "We have offered our hospitality for humans suffering a heinous kidnapping in Guantánamo," Mujica said in statement. "The unavoidable reason is humanitarian."
Days later, Mujica went further, not only reiterating his accusations against the United States but proclaiming the jihadists innocent. "I never doubted, just by using my common sense, that they were paying for something they never did," Mujica said. "We considered this to be a just cause and we had to help them."
Who were these men Mujica described as innocent refugees and victims of US injustice? See this, from Thomas Joscelyn, for details.
Three of the high-risk detainees trained at al Qaeda training camps, stayed in al Qaeda guesthouses, prepared to be suicide bombers, and fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora in what many believed would be al Qaeda's last stand. Diyab, the jihadist now missing in South America, was an "expert document forger and al Qaeda associate" who worked with the network of Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda leader, and an associate of Mohammad Zammer, the al Qaeda recruiter who identified and enlisted many of the 9/11 hijackers (who is now a free man in Syria reportedly working for ISIS).
Despite this evidence Clifford Sloan, Obama's special envoy for closing Guantanamo, thanked Mujica and endorsed his claim accepting the detainees was a humanitarian gesture. "We are very grateful to Uruguay for this important humanitarian action, and to President Mujica for his strong leadership in providing a home for individuals who cannot return to their own countries," said Sloan. A Pentagon statement also said nothing about Mujica's calumny and merely thanked Uruguay for its help.
When we read this praise for Mujica, we wondered if we'd missed something. Surely the U.S. government wouldn't let a foreign leader get away with mischaracterizing longtime jihadists as innocents and slandering US military and intelligence professionals as kidnappers, right? Even for Barack Obama, with his history of downplaying the threat from jihadists and his alarming patience with anti-Americanism, this would be too much.