Al Qaeda conduit to Somali sent to Gitmo

Washington Post:

A Somali man who U.S. authorities allege has close ties to al-Qaeda operations in Africa was transferred to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this week, Defense Department officials announced yesterday, the third detainee to arrive at the prison in recent weeks.

Defense officials identified the man as Abdullahi Sudi Arale but provided scant information about him. They described him as a courier between al-Qaeda operatives in East Africa and Pakistan and said he "assisted extremists in acquiring weapons and explosives," as well as facilitating travel by providing false documents for al-Qaeda operatives and foreign fighters.

"The capture of Abdullahi Sudi Arale exemplifies the genuine threat that the United States and other countries face throughout the world from dangerous extremists," a Pentagon news release said. The release also suggested that interrogators can learn about terrorist operations in Africa by questioning Arale at Guantanamo Bay.

In bringing three detainees to Guantanamo since March, the Defense Department has signaled a willingness to keep approximately 385 detainees there in indefinite custody and to increase the population held there, despite bipartisan sentiment in favor of closing the facility. In September, President Bush ordered 14 high-value detainees to be moved from CIA secret prisons to Guantanamo, the first new detainees brought there since September 2004.

Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said Arale was transferred to Guantanamo earlier this week and that he was captured recently in the Horn of Africa region. Gordon declined to offer more details. Arale was in U.S. custody overseas for an unspecified period of time before his transfer.

A group of human rights organizations plans to release a report today naming as many as 39 people believed to have been taken into secret CIA custody and who have since disappeared. Arale is not among those listed. The report decries the Bush administration's secret imprisonment of those people and calls on the United States to end the program, acknowledge who is in secret custody and provide the International Committee of the Red Cross access to them.

Today, three of the groups -- Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University -- plan to file in federal court a lawsuit seeking documents and information about the people who have apparently disappeared. The suit is to be filed against several U.S. government agencies, including the Defense Department, the CIA and the Justice Department.

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These terrorist rights groups are useful idiots of al Qaeda along with the NY Times and several Democrats who want to confer constitutional rights on enemy unlawful combatants. How much information would be get out of KSM or other terrorist about on going plots after we read them a Miranda Warning and appoint a counsel who will tell them not to say anything? These people are not deserving of these rights and giving them those rights will result in the mass murder of more Americans.