Monday, February 23, 2009

Gee, Thanks Guys

The Washington Post has an interesting article chronicling the journey of Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi "from captive to suicide bomber". Caught in Afghanistan and alleged to be a Taliban fighter, Ajmi was held in Guantanamo Bay for four years without trial before being released without explanation to his home country of Kuwait. From there, he traveled to Iraq and killed himself while detonating a truck bomb in an Iraqi army base in Mosul, along with 13 Iraqi soldiers.

But buried in the story there was this lovely tidbit detailing one of the ways the Guantanamo Bay staff tried to prevent the inmates' lawyers from effectively representing their clients:
In subsequent meetings, said Wilner, who is Jewish, one of the Kuwaiti detainees, Fouad Mahmoud al-Rabiah, told him that one of his interrogators urged him to be wary of his attorneys because of their faith. "How could you trust Jews? Throughout history, Jews have betrayed Muslims. Don't you think your lawyers, who are Jews, will betray you?" the interrogator said, according to Rabiah.

Oh how fabulous. There's nothing I like the US government doing more than encouraging folks to hate and mistrust Jews so as to help deprive other people of effective legal representation. What a charming little story in the history of American religious tolerance.

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