SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A Kuwaiti freed from Guantanamo Bay carried out a suicide car bombing recently in Iraq, the U.S. military said Wednesday, confirming what is believed to be the first such attack by a former detainee at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba.
Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi took part in one of three suicide bomb attacks last month that targeted Iraqi security forces in Mosul. At least seven people were killed in the attacks.
Al-Ajmi’s American lawyer said incarceration at Guantanamo may have turned the Kuwaiti into a terrorist. But the U.S. military says he was already an enemy combatant when he was brought to Guantanamo in 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan.
Up to 36 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed hostilities against the U.S., the Pentagon says. Al-Ajmi is apparently the first to have become a suicide bomber.
Military documents show al-Ajmi, 29, had a history of discipline problems at Guantanamo Bay, where he was held for more than 3 1/2 years. According to one report, al-Ajmi said in August 2004 that “he now is a jihadist, an enemy combatant, and that he will kill as many Americans as he possibly can.”
Tom Wilner, a lawyer who represented al-Ajmi and other Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo, said his client once appeared for a meeting with a broken arm and that al-Ajmi said he had suffered the injury when guards tried to stop him from praying.
Wilner, who met with al-Ajmi about five times in 2005, said he appeared “particularly angry” about being confined without charge.
Despite his problems at Guantanamo, in 2005 al-Ajmi was transferred to Kuwait, which was supposed to ensure he would not pose a threat.
But in May 2006, a Kuwaiti court acquitted him of being a member of al-Qaeda and raising money for the terrorist organization. The court also acquitted four other former Guantanamo prisoners.
