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Friday, June 17, 2011

Released from Gitmo back to Pakistan under promise of never being released from jail, is released from jail and has re-joined Al-Qaeda

Another slap in the face by our "friend" Pakistan.  I will keep asking until there is an honest answer: when will the US get the memo that as long as we continue to give Pakistan millions in jizya every year there will be no end to the "war on terror" in Pakistan? 

This continuing scenario is a great example of cognative dissonance.


From AP/Yahoo June 15 by Adam Goldman

Linchpin in hunt for bin Laden back with al-Qaida

WASHINGTON – A key al-Qaida operative returned to Pakistan by the CIA after he gave the U.S. information that eventually led to the location of Osama bin Laden has since rejoined al-Qaida, U.S. officials say.

The agency returned Hassan Ghul to Pakistan not long after the CIA closed its remaining secret prisons in Eastern Europe in 2006.

The CIA had been given assurances that Ghul, a native of Pakistan, would not go free. But Pakistan failed to keep its word. Ghul was let go and later rejoined al-Qaida, angering the CIA officers who worked so hard to take him off the battlefield, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials.

Pakistan's decision to free Ghul is yet another troubling revelation at a time when the U.S. is rethinking its relationship with Pakistan and whether it can be a trusted ally in fighting terrorism.

No more thinking, there is enough evidence to stop the money tonight. 

Members of Congress have talked about ending aid to Pakistan after bin Laden was found inside Pakistan, hiding out in an urban area not far from a military garrison. Last week, CIA Director Leon Panetta confronted Pakistan's intelligence service about tipping off militants running bomb factories aimed at killing U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Ghul's return to Pakistan also raises questions about how the Bush administration, which was committed to keeping arguably less dangerous detainees locked up at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could hand over the man who provided the key information about bin Laden's trusted courier, intelligence that in May led to bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. commandos.

The move frustrated former CIA officers, who at the time believed Ghul should have been moved to Guantanamo along with 14 other high-value detainees like Abu Zubaydah, a major al-Qaida facilitator, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

A U.S. official said Pakistan made promises that it would hold Ghul, only to let him go and re-establish contact with al-Qaida. A senior Pakistani intelligence official said he had no information about Ghul.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because details about Ghul's case remain classified.
Former CIA officials say Ghul was part of Zubaydah's clandestine network of moneymen and couriers. He was well-known to the CIA before the 9/11 attacks. The CIA had been pressing Pakistan to arrest Ghul for years and later learned after 9/11 he had been hiding at safe houses in the Lahore area belonging to the terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.

But Pakistan's spy service, the ISI, refused to pick up Ghul.

When the CIA figured out that Ghul was traveling to meet with al-Qaida operatives who had gone to Iraq after the 2003 invasion to fight the U.S., the agency decided to act. In a joint operation with the Kurds, Ghul was nabbed in northern Iraq in January 2004...

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