Released Guantanamo Bay detainee and ex-Osama Bin Laden aide Ibrahim al Qosi is now a primary recruiter for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), appearing in innumerable propaganda films.
The 56-year-old was a close confidante of Osama Bin Laden, helping the terror leader orchestrate attacks against the United States, including the 9/11 massacre. He was transported to Gitmo in 2002 and ultimately plead guilty to war crimes in 2010. Qosi was released from the US naval base in June of 2012 after 10 years in custody. He initially settled in Sudan but then found his way to Yemen where he began to make appearances in AQAP recruitment clips before emerging as the face of al Qaeda jihadist propaganda.
In December, Qosi’s former U.S. attorney, Paul Reichler told the Miami Herald in an email that he was unaware of any plans for foul play at the time his client’s release. It’s been one year since Reichler spoke to Qosi’s post-Gitmo legal counsel. “I was told by a Sudanese lawyer a year ago that al Qosi was working as a taxi driver in Khartoum,” Reichler stated. “I have received no information about his activities since then, and I do not know what he has been doing, or where he is living.”
The ex-Bin Laden aide’s most inflammatory video was posted recently and called for a coup of the Saudi monarchy, arguably a move that would amount to geopolitical disaster. Fox News explains:
Qosi speaks about Al Qaeda’s jihad against the Saudi monarchy, claiming Usama bin Laden was motivated by the U.S. government’s “occupation” of the country’s two holiest sanctuaries, the journal reported.
Qosi’s call for an end to the Saudi-U.S. alliance came at nearly the same time an Al Qaeda newsletter published a 9/11 “insider account” from a former AQAP leader who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in June.
Qosi is just one example of an ex-Gitmo detainee returning to a life of terrorism. Despite high-recidivism rates, President Obama has repeatedly for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, even calling for his staff to come up with ways to circumvent Congressional obstruction. “In November three former senior Obama administration attorneys argued that the president had the constitutional power to ignore the legal restrictions Congress has placed on bringing dangerous detainees to the United States,” writes Harvard Law School professor and Hoover Institute senior fellow Jack Goldsmith. “Presidential aides suggested that the White House was taking the argument seriously.”
However, Goldsmith insists that for all the pomp and rhetoric, Obama may not even have a logistically plausible way of closing Gitmo for good. “But the President said nothing about how he intends to shut down the prison. His administration has promised Congress a concrete plan to do so for a long time,” notes Goldsmith, adding:
The reason the President has not yet proposed a plan for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and the reason he said so little about it in his self-consciously upbeat address, is that he lacks a plausible path to doing so.
Closing Guantanamo would require the President to find a home for the approximately 100 detainees still there. Even if the President can transfer the less dangerous detainees to other countries under somewhat lenient congressional rules, he faces an absolute ban on bringing the other fifty or so more dangerous ones to the United States. Congress could in theory lift the ban and appropriate the money needed to retrofit a high-security prison in the United States. The chances of this happening before the President leaves office are zero, no matter what the President proposes.
“In November three former senior Obama administration attorneys argued that the president had the constitutional power to ignore the legal restrictions Congress has placed on bringing dangerous detainees to the United States.”
Harvard Law School professor and Hoover Institute senior fellow Jack Goldsmith.
Whether or not Obama finds a way to fulfill his highly-publicized campaign promise of closing Gitmo is immaterial at the moment. The fact is, Qosi, and others like him, have already been released despite reassurances by the administration that high-risk detainees would remain in custody.