How many ticking time bombs are out there?

As I reflect on the recent Supreme Court decision concerning legal rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees, Abdullah Salih al Ajmi comes to mind.

Ajmi is a former Kuwaiti detainee who was held with other suspected terrorists at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo. Ajmi was released but returned to the battlefield on March 23, when he and another Kuwaiti conducted a suicide truck bombing at an Iraqi military outpost in Mosul. Thirteen Iraqi soldiers were killed and 42 wounded in the attack.

Ajmi has me recalling the warm winter of 2003 I spent on the slab of volcanic rock on the southeastern tip of Cuba that is home to our naval base at Guantanamo Bay. I was interviewing the detainees about terrorism along with members of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (made famous by the television series “NCIS”) and other law enforcement officers.

I remember interviewing a Kuwaiti there, but I can’t remember his name. I have looked at Ajmi’s photograph on the Internet time and time again, trying to remember if I saw him there.

It troubles me that someone the U.S. once had in custody caused so much additional loss of life. And I am very concerned that the Supreme Court ruling could lead to the release of what I believe are very dangerous terrorists.

The idea of Ajmi and his fellow detainees being released is a lot more dangerous than a drug dealer beating a murder charge in Baltimore. Drug dealers kill their fellow drug dealers 99 percent of the time, and those killings happen one or two at a time. Al-Qaeda fanatics are trying to kill us and our allies in large numbers. They are trying to destroy our cultural, economic and legal systems and spread terror throughout our country.

News reports estimate 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo. The Department of Defense estimates 25 or more of the 500 released detainees have returned to the battlefield. Are the remaining 475 released detainees ticking time bombs?

The central thought I carried away from Guantanamo Bay was how much dedication the detainees had and how willing they were to sacrifice their lives for the jihad against the United States. My dedication to the U.S. and the FBI paled in comparison. I was also struck by their refusal to respond to reason.

One visible sign of the detainees’ dedication is their beards. I remember an Arab I interviewed having a long beard, like those frequently associated with Islamic fundamentalists involved in jihad. Our conversation covered how he would be killed if the U.S. returned him to his native country. But he was fully prepared to die at the hand of his own country’s security forces rather than shave his beard.

Recent news reports estimate that about 300 detainees are still held at Guantanamo. They are probably the true hard-core al-Qaeda members, including the surviving members of the September 11, 2001 conspiracy.

Many of the detainees I spoke with were arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani troops as they fled U.S. air strikes hitting Tora Bora, Afghanistan in December 2001. One related how he was with 80 men when U.S. planes attacked them. Only five men survived, but the detainees’s dedication was not shaken. When I spoke to him after two years of imprisonment, he was still a true believer.

How will this Supreme Court decision be implemented? Will the federal rules of evidence be employed to review the cases against the detainees? Does this require a Pakistani soldier to testify in federal court about what was said at the time of detention? What about a Miranda warning alerting detainees to their legal rights in U.S. courts?

How will the federal courts deal with the issues of torture or severe interrogation by the U.S. Army and/or the CIA? How much access will the detainees have to secret intelligence information? In a normal criminal case in U.S. federal and state courts all these issues could lead to the release of a defendant.

The possibility of these detainees being released is truly scary. An inspired batch of 475 human time bombs can cause much death and destruction. Could these detainees repeat September 11, 2001? {EXA}

Dan Dreibelbis is a retired Special Agent of the FBI and an adjunct instructor for the Stevenson University graduate forensic program. He can be reached at  dan.dreibelbis at verizon.net.