Tag Archive for: Guantanamo

Biden Frees Gitmo Terrorist Linked to Chanukah Murder of Israeli Children

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He “can quote Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King like teenagers quote Taylor Swift.”

On Chanukah 2002, four Hercules planes bearing hundreds of people evacuated from Africa landed in Israel. The passengers included Israeli families who had been vacationing in Kenya, some alive, some wounded, and some children returning to their homeland in small coffins.

Now, Biden has decided to release Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, an Islamic terrorist who, “participated in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks”, from Guantanamo Bay..

2002 had been a bad year in Israel. 457 Israelis were murdered by terrorists in one of the worst years of the Islamic campaign of genocide against the country’s indigenous Jewish population. By the time fall came around, families in a terrorized nation were looking to get away from a year of suicide bombings, shootings, and brutal atrocities. Families, many working class, scrimped and saved to be able to afford a Chanukah trip somewhere safe out of the country.

On the eve of Chanukah, a group of Israeli tourists had just arrived at the Paradise Hotel in

Mombasa, while another group was flying back to Israel.

The Islamic terrorists timed their attack precisely: two missiles lifted off targeting the Israeli plane with 271 passengers and crew on board. The aircraft momentarily trembled, but few of the passengers noticed that anything had gone wrong. The missile damaged the plane’s tail, but the aircraft was able to continue flying on and landed safely with all of its passengers in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli captain thought that a bird had hit the plane.

The terrorist attack at the Paradise Hotel proved more successful. The booby trapped SUV smashed past a barrier to get through to the hotel. One of the terrorists wearing a bomb vest ran out shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, and blew up, and the driver smashed the vehicle into the hotel, while the remaining terrorist detonated the bomb inside filling the entrance with shrapnel.

A surviving video shows a final moment of a Paradise Hotel employee telling the Israelis, “Welcome to Africa”.

Two decades ago, Ayelet, then 15 years old, saw the carnage firsthand. “Everything was burning. I thought my sisters were inside the fire,” she told reporters.

When I contacted Ayelet today, she was shocked to learn that Bajabu would be released.

“Thank God, my family and I got back home safely from Mombasa, but I am sure that those who have lost their beloved children, parents or partners won’t be able to understand how come this kind of person is getting free.”

“I would like to see justice done,” Ayelet told me.

Few in America or Israel understand the manic obsession with which the Obama and Biden administrations have pursued the release of some of the worst Islamic terrorists on the planet. Some advocates have even tried to use false accusations of racism to justify their crusade.

Lee Wolosky, Obama’s point man for freeing Gitmo terrorists, recently argued, “If these detainees had been white and not brown or black, is there any realistic chance the United States… would imprison them without charge for decades?”

And yet the victims of the terrorists whom Obama and Biden have worked so hard to set loose were “brown or black”, Africans and Middle Eastern Jews, often poor or working class.

Albert de Havila, the tour guide leading the trip, a Jewish immigrant from Morocco, had been struggling financially. The trip was his opportunity to turn things around. He was killed where he stood in the lobby, his daughter, who later moved to America, was not injured.

Upstairs, the Anter family, who also originated from the Muslim world, was just getting settled. Rahamim Anter, who worked in a rope factory, had carefully saved money to take his three children somewhere safe to enjoy Chanukah after a year of murderous Islamic terrorism.

A week earlier, the family had celebrated Noy Anter’s 12th birthday. The trip had been a surprise from their parents for Noy, his fourteen year old brother Dvir, and their 8-year-old little sister.

Ora Anter, their mother, wanted to get some refreshments downstairs. The two boys joined her.

Noy had been excited to take his first trip out of the small country he had lived in all his life.

It was his final trip.

The Islamic terrorist attack killed Noy and his brother Dvir, described as a smart and shy boy, and left their mother Ora hooked up to a respirator.

“Suddenly there was an explosion. I jumped up and saw fire through the window. I ran outside and looked everywhere for them, trying with all my might to save them,” Rahamim described.

Mercy Neema Mwagambo, the hotel’s receptionist, was seeing to the guests when the bomb went off. Covered in burns, she crawled to the swimming pool and jumped in. The Israelis flew her and her mother, along with other wounded staff, out to a Jerusalem hospital.

Other hotel employees who were closer to the blast were not so lucky. Ten of them were killed.

“It was a giant explosion. I saw a lot of people injured, covered with blood,” one woman said.

Seven years later, a few days after the latest 9/11 anniversary, Operation Celestial Balance took out Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, Al Qaeda’s Somalia boss, and the FBI’s third most wanted terrorist.

After helicopters shot up the convoy, Seal Team Six went in and confirmed that Nabhan was dead. The Somali Al Qaeda leader had been linked to some of Al Qaeda’s earliest operations against America, the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the Paradise Hotel attack. The operation would later be seen as prep for getting Bin Laden.

A few years earlier, the Kenyans had already captured Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu and turned him over to the United States. And from there he was sent on to Gitmo.

According to Bajabu’s lawyer, he is a peace-loving man who “can quote Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King like teenagers quote Taylor Swift.”

That raises the question of which hotel full of Jews Martin Luther King have bombed.

A Gitmo terror threat assessment noted that Bajabu “admitted that he participated in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks in Mombasa, which included the bombing-of the Israeli-owned Kikambala Paradise Hotel and a missile attack on an Israeli airliner.”

The peace-loving Bajabu who can’t stop quoting Gandhi was also allegedly “involved in a plot to attack the Kenyan Anti-Terrorism Headquarters located in Nairobi, and the Mombasa Marathon,with the intent of killing Americans and Israelis.”

Other terrorists said that they “discussed future operations at detainee’s home, to include potential attacks on US and Israeli Embassies”.

While no copies of Gandhi or MLK speeches were found at Bajabu’s home, the assessment noted that he “stored rockets, anti-aircraft missiles, explosives, and mines at his residence”.

After abortive discussions during the Obama administration about turning over Bajabu to the Israelis to face justice for the Chanukah massacre, the Biden administration is setting him free.

Bajabu’s lawyer claims that the terrorist has a “a large and loving family” in Somalia.

After the attack, Rahamim Anter called his brother, shouting, “I have no children. Noy ​​and Dvir have gone.”

The pro-terrorist leftist lawfare groups, like Human Rights Watch, that labored to help the terrorists are celebrating Bajabu’s release. There are no celebrations in Kenya or Israel.

The Paradise Hotel terrorist attack has left deep scars in both nations. Thirteen people, most of them Kenyans, were killed in the Paradise Hotel attack. Many others, including a number of other Israeli teenagers and children, were wounded. Some still live with the trauma to this day.

“I think these kinds of people should stay behind bars, not just for what they did, but for their intentions as well,” Ayelet told me. “I think that a long time won’t pass before he will do something like that again, the minute he will have the chance.”

Last year we learned that 229 former Gitmo detainees had returned to terrorism. And yet last month, Biden complained that the defense spending bill prevented him from closing Gitmo.

Bajabu is one of five Islamic terrorists freed by Biden from Guatanamo Bay. The radical administration is determined to free as many of the enemy as possible to kill again.

“Today’s decision is wonderful news,” the terrorist’s lawyer declared, and claimed that his client “longs to be reunited with his family.”

That is a privilege forever denied to the families of his victims.

Biden has relentlessly exploited the death of his son for political gain, but he has shown no empathy for the losses and suffering of the children killed by the terrorists he is protecting, whether in the Palestinian Authority, in Hamas, or even in our custody in Guantanamo Bay.

Rahamim Anter said that he had taken his family on vacation, “to look for calm far from the intifada to take the children on safari, but I brought back their little bodies to put them in the ground”.

When Biden addressed the anti-Israel J Street lobby group, he closed with a poem by Seamus Heaney,  “History says, Don’t hope, On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime, The longed-for tidal wave, Of justice can rise up.”

Whatever justice comes to the Islamic terrorists of Gitmo and to their victims whose coffins rode those four planes on a Chanukah two decades past, it will not come on this side of the grave.

Or at least not if Biden and his pro-terrorist administration have anything to say about it.

After the attack, the Israeli Defense Minister had vowed that the “killers of children” would face a reckoning. “Our hand will reach them.”

Biden, his radical regime, the multitude of lawyers who lobbied for the terrorists, hoped to help Bajabu, but they may have instead ensured that he faces justice on “this side of the grave.”

COLUMN BY

DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Are Biden’s Handlers Making Room for Right-Wing ‘Terrorists’ at Guantanamo?

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My latest in PJ Media:

The establishment media agrees that Biden’s handlers’ freeing of Taliban jihadi Abdul Latif Nasser from Guantanamo, where he had been held for nineteen years, was the first step toward taking care of more unfinished business from the Obama administration and finally closing the notorious prison camp. But is that really the plan? Or might Guantanamo be filled up with a new group of terrorists?

The signs aren’t hard to find. CNN reported Wednesday that “the Justice Department repeatedly has documented the emergence of what could be called small, right-wing extremist groups.” One of the examples offered in the report is that of Robert Morss, a Pennsylvania resident who was arrested in connection with the January 6 Reichstag Fire. According to CNN, when Morss was arrested, police “found in his car a notebook with a page titled, ‘Step by Step to Create Hometown Militia.’ Beneath it Morss allegedly scribbled bullet point reminders, fleshing out the idea of forming a violent cell – ‘bring assault rifle’ and ‘set up your kit’ — and notes on ‘formation.’”

Then there were Ian Rogers and Jarrod Copeland, who were “so devoted to former President Donald Trump and so angry about the 2020 election result, that they allegedly plotted to blow up the Democratic headquarters building in Sacramento. One commented over an encrypted messaging thread, where the two discussed planning, that he realized they would be perceived as domestic terrorists, and the second man had previously joined an anti-government militia group.”

Whether these three men actually did anything criminal, or planned to do so, is a matter for the courts to decide. But ominously, a prosecutor wrote about the Rogers/Copeland case that “all of the political and social conditions that motivated them to plan what they themselves described as a terrorist attack remain.”

What are those conditions? Raw Story gave a clue to the answer to that in a risibly hysterical piece Monday that began:

A very particular, cultish and dangerous brand of domestic terrorism has been honed, and we should call it what it is: Trumpist terrorism.

 We’ve rarely if ever experienced domestic terrorism organized not only in the service of an ideology — white supremacy — but in the name of one person, a cult figure for whom people will kill and die, devoted to his cause and taking perceived orders from him.

 But that is what is happening now.

There is more. Read the rest here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s Handlers’ Freeing of Guantanamo Detainee Highlights the Confusion and Failure of the ‘War on Terror’

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Abdul Latif Nasser spent nineteen years in the Guantanamo prison camp without charge. This was a tremendous injustice, and was born of the confusion about what exactly we were facing after 9/11 in the first place. Bush called it a “war on terror,” and so we put enemy combatants in a prison camp. In past wars, soldiers who became prisoners of war were generally not tried; they were held until the end of hostilities and then released. But Bush’s war became Obama’s war and was then transformed by the latter into a war against “violent extremism,” which opened the door for the identity of the enemy to be shifted from jihadis to “white supremacists,” a label increasingly used of all non-Leftist Americans. Neither the war against “terror” or against “violent extremism” have any definable end point, so there was no end point for the jihadis in Guantanamo.

Meanwhile, many former Guantanamo detainees have returned to the jihad. Will Abdul Latif Nasser do so? Time will tell. But was anything done while he was at Gitmo to disabuse him of his jihadist sensibilities? Of course not. That would have been “Islamophobic.” Instead, he was given a Qur’an, the book that led him to wage jihad in the first place, in a manner that demonstrated that even the infidel U.S. had exaggerated reverence for the book: non-Muslim guards even wore gloves when handling it (because unbelievers are “unclean,” as per Qur’an 9:28). It is entirely possible that Abdul Latif Nasser is an even more hardened and determined jihadi than he was before. Your taxpayer dollars, and Washington’s willful ignorance, at work.

Guantanamo detainee Abdul Latif Nasser speaks out after release

by Guy Davies, ABC News, July 20, 2021:

A Guantanamo Bay detainee who spent nearly two decades at the notorious facility and thought he might not make it out alive spoke out after being released — the first prisoner freed by the Biden administration.

“I was born again on July 19. My birthday is no longer March 4. I was born yesterday on July 19,” Abdul Latif Nasser said in a statement shared with ABC News. “I have no words to describe my overwhelming sense of happiness and joy. It is like a miracle after 20 years to be home and celebrate Eid together with my family.”

On Tuesday, the legal charity Reprieve, which campaigned for his release and provided legal support, confirmed to ABC News that Nasser was reunited with his family in Morocco.

Nasser, whose case was profiled by ABC News in 2019, was first cleared for release from Guantanamo more than five years ago. He had been detained there for 19 years after he was captured in Afghanistan, alleged by the U.S. government to be an active member of the Taliban and then to have trained with al-Qaeda.

During his time at Guantanamo, he was never charged with a crime, and his lawyers stress that none of the U.S. government’s claims have been aired in a court of law. He was cleared for release in 2016 following a Periodic Review Board (PRB) hearing, set up by the Obama administration in 2011, in order to speed up the process recommending individuals for transfer away from the facility.

The PRB consists of officials from six major agencies, and all members of the board must recommend that law of war detention is no longer justified….

In a statement from Nasser’s brother, Mustafa, his family said were delighted Nasser was home in time for the Islamic festival, Eid al-Adha….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden to Celebrate 20th Anniversary of 9/11 by Freeing Gitmo Terrorists

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Biden is restarting every terrible Obama project. And he’s trying to finish those that Obama couldn’t.

Obama’s big dream was freeing all the terrorists and closing Gitmo. One of his first executive orders addressed Gitmo’s terrorists. He forced out Secretary of Defense Hagel over it, and terrorized Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to such an extent that at one point Obama actually asked a Republican Congress for the power to override him on this. The Osama mission wasn’t about killing the terrorist leader, but detaining him for a civilian trial so he could justify dismantling Gitmo and the military court system.

Biden is following in Obama’s footsteps, but he’s chosen to be less confrontational about it. That’s a matter of tactics, not ends.

Unlike Hagel and Carter, Biden picked Lloyd Austin as a guy who will rubber stamp the worst possible abuses and crimes against national security.

It began with prioritizing Gitmo terrorists for vaccines.

9/11 vets expressed their fury at Joe Biden after the Pentagon approved giving Covid vaccines to Guantanamo Bay terror inmates before most Americans.

Tom Van Essen, who was New York City Fire Commissioner during the September 11 attacks, called the move “f**king nuts.”

“The fact that the 9/11 community can’t get the vaccine and the terrorists can show how backward our government is,” John Feal, who was a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero, said.

“It’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s an insult to the people who ran into the towers and were killed and those who worked on the pile for months and are ill.”

Last month, I wrote about one of Biden’s more outrageous Gitmo release parties.

Biden’s newest charity case wanted something bigger. The dossier describes the 9/11 mastermind’s associate and Paracha chatting about Al Qaeda getting some “radiological or nuclear items several times” because Paracha wanted “to help al-Qaida ‘do something big against the US.’”

Paracha “also discussed nuclear attacks and attacks against nuclear power plants” and had an idea for “al-Qaida to attack a nuclear power plant”.

So you can see why Joe Biden is letting him go.

But the overall strategy is keeping Biden’s plot against America on the down-low.

President Joe Biden has quietly begun efforts to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, using an under-the-radar approach to minimize political blowback and to try to make at least some progress in resolving a long-standing legal and human rights morass before the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

And then Biden can have a party to celebrate the 20th anniversary with his new Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Iranian terrorist buddies.

But he’s trying to keep it secret.

After initial plans for a more aggressive push to close the facility — including rebuffed attempts to recruit a special envoy to oversee the strategy — the White House changed course, sources said. The administration has opted to wait before it reaches out to Congress, which has thwarted previous efforts to close the camp, because of fears that political outcry might interfere with the rest of Biden’s agenda.

“They don’t want it to become a dominant issue that blows up,” a former senior administration official involved in the discussions said of Biden officials. “They don’t want it to become a lightning rod.”

Don’t tell the Americans what we’re up to. Let the media keep posting pictures of Biden with dogs or kids, while the nation is betrayed.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Why Bowe Bergdahl is not an American “Gilad Shalit”

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Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak, PM Netnayhau, Gilad Shalit, IDF COS Benn Gantz October 18, 2011

The Times of Israel published a story endeavoring to equate the five year kidnapping and captivity of IDF solider Gilad Shalit with US Army enlisted man Bowe Bergdahl who went AWOL and subsequently was held captive for five years by the Haqqani Taliban, “American ‘Gilad Shalit’ freed from captivity in Afghanistan”.

The time span may have been the same for both soldiers. However, the circumstances and outcomes were not the same.

Both were imprisoned by terrorist groups, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists in Shalit’s case, the Taliban in Bergdahl’s instance. Both prisoner releases involved intermediaries, Germany and Egypt in the case of Shalit; Qatar in the instance of Bergdahl.  The numbers of prisoners exchanged for the release of Shalit were lopsided, over 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to secure Shalit’s release.  Those released had been responsible for the deaths of several hundred Israeli citizens.

Contrast that with the five Afghan Taliban commanders in the prisoner exchange for Bergdahl.  Few in number, however, they were involved in the one of the worst genocides committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1998 involving the massacre of more than 8,000 Hazara Shia men, women and children in Marar- I- Sharif. The release of five Taliban commanders and war criminals, who perpetrated that genocide, has raised considerable questions by Chairmen and Ranking members of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and other Members of Congress. There have been calls for investigations of the circumstances behind Bergdahl’s actions in 2009, as well as, whether the President’s actions may have violated the law regarding negotiations with terrorists.  Then there are possible repercussions in Afghanistan and the Muslim Ummah for these Taliban commanders who are veritable   rock stars in international Jihadism. They may pose a serious threat when released from a year’s detention in Qatar.  Oatar, whose Emir had acted as an intermediary in the prisoner exchange that released Sgt. Bergdahl.

Shalit’s kidnapping and release

Shalit was kidnapped at gun point on June 25, 2006 after an attack by terrorists from the Palestine Resistance Committee using underground tunnels on his tank unit stationed at the Keren Shalom crossing on the southern Israel Gaza frontier.  He was released on October 18, 2011 after an agreement had been reached by German and Egyptian negotiators for an exchange with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.  Hamas initially denied International Red Cross requests for confirmation, instead directly contacting his parents six days later indicating that he was a prisoner and would be treated in accordance with Islamic law.  Repeated Israeli and French government and international requests were made for IRC visits in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The only contact with the outside world during Shalit’s incarceration in Gaza were three letters, an audio tape, and a DVD that Israel received in return for releasing 20 female Palestinian prisoners.   Shalit’s parents petitioned both Israel President Peres and PM Netanyahu and mounted rallies for rescue of their son in both Israel and abroad.  Because of the family’s dual Israeli French citizenship they had the support of then French President Nicolas Sarkozy endeavoring to pressure Hamas for release of their son.

PM Netanyahu’s Remarks upon Shalit’s Release

Shalit, when freed was greeted by the IDF Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, then Defense Minister Ehud Barak and PM Netanyahu.  There were no questions about Shalit’s loyalties.  Shalit’s parents were grateful despite disagreements with PM Netanyahu over tough negotiations involving problematic release of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands.  Most Israelis approved the exchange to secure Shalit’s release.  PM Netanyahu noted in his remarks at the time of Shalit’s release:

Two-and-a-half years ago, I returned to the Prime Minister’s Office. One of the principal and most complicated missions that I found on my desk, and which I set my heart to, was to bring our abducted soldier Gilad Shalit back home, alive and well. Today, that mission has been completed.

It entailed a very difficult decision. I saw the need to return home someone whom the State of Israel had sent to the battlefield. As an IDF soldier and commander, I went out on dangerous missions many times. But I always knew that if I or one of my comrades fell captive, the Government of Israel would do its utmost to return us home, and as Prime Minister, I have now carried this out. As a leader who daily sends out soldiers to defend Israeli citizens, I believe that mutual responsibility is no mere slogan – it is a cornerstone of our existence here.

While the release of Shalit in exchange for over 1,027 Palestinian prisoners was controversial PM Netanyahu noted the precautions Israel took in his remarks at Gilad’s release:

But I also see an additional need, that of minimizing the danger to the security of Israel’s citizens. To this end, I enunciated two clear demands. First, that senior Hamas leaders, including arch-murderers, remain in prison. Second, that the overwhelming majority of those designated for release either be expelled or remain outside Judea and Samaria, in order to impede their ability to attack our citizens.

For years, Hamas strongly opposed these demands. But several months ago, we received clear signs that it was prepared to back down from this opposition. Tough negotiations were carried out, night and day, in Cairo, with the mediation of the Egyptian government. We stood our ground, and when our main demands were met – I had to make a decision.

And today, now Gilad has returned home, to his family, his people and his country. This is a very moving moment. A short time ago, I embraced him as he came off the helicopter and escorted him to his parents, Aviva and Noam, and I said, ‘I have brought your son back home.’ But this is also a hard day; even if the price had been smaller, it would still have been heavy.

Bergdahl’s Alleged AWOL led to his capture by the Taliban.

On June 25, 2009 Sgt. Bergdahl walked away from his forward operational base in Afghanistan with only water, a knife, a compass, a digital camera, notebook and knapsack with some clothes only to be captured by Taliban forces.  He went Absent without Leave (AWOL) an action punishable, if proven, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  These roving Taliban fighters passed him along to captivity at a Haqqani base along the Afghanistan Pakistan frontier.  There are indications he may have been moved into a Taliban safe haven inside Pakistan.  Unlike Shalit, Bergdahl emailed his parents indicating that he had effectively deserted.  The Christian Science Monitor cites  a 2012 Rolling Stones article containing these email exchanges with his father by Bowe Bergdahl:

The US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good SGTs are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same.”

I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.”

In his final message, Bergdahl refers to having mailed home boxes with his uniforms and books.

“Feel free to open them, and use them,” he wrote.

Later that night, Bowe Bergdahl’s father Bob Bergdahl, a UPS truck driver, sent his son an email from their home in Hailey, Idaho, with the subject line: OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!

Bergdahl, while he lived in confinement participated in making several proof of life ideas beseeching the US government to rescue him, while accusing American coalition forces of human rights violations of the Afghan people.

Robert Bergdhal at Boise News Confererence. Source: ABC news

The Senior Bergdahl’s Bizarre White House Invocation and Tweets

On June 1, 2014 a tearful Robert Bergdahl at a Boise news conference proclaimed in a video that he was proud of what his son Bowe had done for the Afghan people:

But most of all, I’m proud of how much you wanted to help the Afghan people, and what you were willing to do to go to that length,” Bob Bergdahl said, fighting back tears during a press conference in Boise. “I’ll say it again: I’m so proud of how far you were willing to go to help the Afghan people. And I think you have succeeded.

The Tuesday before the past weekend release of Sgt. Bergdahl, the senior Bergdahl exchanged Tweets with the Taliban spokesperson using a graphic of him against the backdrop of the Muslim profession of faith, the Shahada, with the demand to “Free All Guantanamo Prisoners”.  He subsequently took down that exchange of Tweets.  Moreover, at the conclusion of Saturday Rose Garden announcement of Sgt. Bergdahl’s release, the father invoked a frequently recited Qur’anic ayah.  Note this email from a colleague, Clare Lopez cited in a post by former Florida Congressman, Allen B. West on his blog, Steadfast and Loyal:

What none of these media is reporting is that the father’s (SGT Bowe Bergdahl’s father Bob) first words at the White House were in Arabic – those words were “bism allah alrahman alraheem” – which means “in the name of Allah the most gracious and most merciful” – these are the opening words of every chapter of the Qur’an except one (the chapter of the sword – the 9th) – by uttering these words on the grounds of the WH, Bergdahl (the father) sanctified the WH and claimed it for Islam. There is no question but POTUS knows this.

Loyalty of Bergdahl Questioned by Army vets in Same Unit

CNN’s Jake Tapper in an article noted that members of Sgt. Bergdahl’s platoon were aggrieved over the loss of comrades in the search after he went missing, “Fellow soldiers call Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero”.

Note these comments from the Tapper CNN article of his former Army platoon members of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, and 25th Infantry Division:

At least six soldiers were killed in subsequent searches for Bergdahl, and many soldiers in his platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the United States in Paktika province in the days and weeks following his disappearance.

“Any of us would have died for him while he was with us, and then for him to just leave us like that, it was a very big betrayal,” said former U.S. Army Sgt. Josh Korder, who has the name of three soldiers who died while searching for Bergdahl tattooed on his back.

“I don’t think I could have continued to go on without being able to share with you and the people the true things that happened in this situation,” Korder said Monday. “Because if you guys aren’t made aware of it, it will just go on, and he’ll be a hero, and nobody will be able to know the truth.”

Then there is Bowe. Bergdahl’s admission of why he took off that fateful day in June 2009:

E-mails reported by the late Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone in 2012 reveal what Bergdahl’s fellow infantrymen learned within days of his disappearance: He told people that he no longer supported the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.

“The future is too good to waste on lies,” he wrote to his parents. “And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.”

Bergdahl wrote to them, “I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”

Concluding Comments

Notwithstanding these email remarks from Bergdahl, some believe that five years captivity under the Taliban may be more than enough punishment and that he deserves to receive treatment and rehabilitation.  After he has recovered then conduct of possible investigations and military tribunals may be another matter. Only time will tell.

By contrast Gilad Shalit today is a sports columnist for Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth, a welcomed public figure at sporting events in Israel.  He also suffered five years of imprisonment. Unlike Bergdahl he was loyal to his IDF buddies and did not betray his country.  Bergdahl’s actions and those of his father are both questionable and disturbing. Their actions are compounded by President Obama’s release of Taliban Jihad commanders arranged by international Muslim Brotherhood supporter, the Emir of Qatar.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.