Home for the Holidays: Obama Frees 12 More Gitmo Terrorists

Mohamed Saleban Bare  

 

Holding true to his campaign promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), Cuba, President Barack Obama has again made the world a little less safe, by releasing twelve more jihadists from that facility over the weekend.

Four Afghans, two Somalis, and six Yemenis were sent back home, presumably to live happily ever after. Amy Goodman, the Marxist journalist whose mission is to disparage the US at every opportunity, took the time to profile one of the ex-prisoners, a Somali named Mohamed Saleban Bare, on her program Democracy Now!. Bare’s story, which kept Goodman spellbound, centered on his description of Gitmo as being “hell on earth.”

Goodman’s source was an interview Bare gave to Agence France Presse upon his release, whereby Bare, using a broad rhetorical brush, painted a dismal portrait of his eight years at Gitmo:

Some of my colleagues in the prison lost their sight, some lost their limbs and others ended up mentally disturbed. I’m OK compared to them. At Bagram and Kandahar, the situation was harsh, but when we were transferred to Guantanamo the torture tactics changed. They use a kind of psychological torture that kills you mentally.

Why would Goodman care about this particular prisoner, anyway?

Well, reading the Agence France Press article, it becomes apparent that Goodman is sympathetic to this jihadist because she thinks he is innocent, which he obviously is, since he says so himself.

According to Bare, he was just minding his business in the Pakistani port city of Karachi two months after the 9/11 attacks when he was picked up by security forces. He was only in Pakistan to visit with relatives, who had fled the violence in Somalia and were hoping to find asylum in a western state. That’s his story, and it’s good enough for Goodman.

One statement in the article, however, which may be troubling to more objective readers of the Agence France Press piece, was either missed by Goodman or not deemed important enough to merit a further look:

Bare was reluctant to answer questions about his alleged ties with Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiya, a Somali Islamist movement, which produced many of the current leaders of the al Qaeda-linked Shebab [terror group].

Bare was released despite having possible ties to an al-Qaeda linked group?

Bare can’t talk about that, but he’s given a forum by a French news service to speak of alleged mistreatments, which is then picked up by Democracy Now!, and reported as fact.

Another example of Marxist “journalism” at its best.