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The Peril in
Paroling Jihadists
by A.J. Caschetta
The Hill
August 3, 2016
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Jihadists
are rarely softened by release from prison.
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Adel Kermiche, the jihadist who killed Rev. Jacques Hamel while he was
celebrating a Catholic mass in France, is the latest illustration of what
happens when a known threat is paroled by a society that finds prison
inhumane. Kermiche, an ISIS recruit arrested trying to reach Syria, was
released by a lenient judge.
Parole has been in the news a lot lately.
In a rare act of courage just over a week ago, California governor Jerry
Brown overruled a parole board decision to release Manson
family member Leslie Van Houten, killer of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca.
And then last week, John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan and James
Brady in 1981, secured his own sweet parole deal (technically it was "convalescent
leave") through the leniency of U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman.
New York State changed its gun laws in response to a shooting rampage by
William Spengler, who was paroled in 1998 after serving 17 years in prison
for killing his grandmother with a hammer. New York State doesn't need more
gun control; it needs parole control.
The U.S. has a history of accepting jihadist parolees. Omar Abdel
Rahman, the blind sheikh, was paroled by Egypt after spending years in
prison for his role in the 1981 assassination of Sadat. He came to the U.S.
in 1990 and was granted a green card in 1991. He is currently serving a
life sentence for his roles in the 1993 WTC bombing and theLandmarks Plot.
What possible value can come from
releasing committed jihadists from prison?
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But the most outrageous example of granting freedom to dangerous
criminals is the ongoing release of Al-Qaeda and Taliban jihadists from
Guantanamo Bay. The Hill has reported that of 676 released Gitmo detainees 118 are
confirmed to have rejoined the fight and another 86 are suspected to have
done so. The recidivism rate among Gitmo detainees has been estimated at 30%.
The massive jihad parole has happened under both the Bush and the Obama
administrations, and both have released killers back to the battlefield.
When Ibrahim al-Rubaish was released by George Bush in 2006, he promptly
became an important leader of AQAP. When Ibrahim al-Qosi was
released by Barack Obama in 2012 he did the same.
Both administrations tried to retain secrecy about the goings on in the
prison. But Bush was mostly trying to keep information from the enemy about
which fighters were out of action, whereas Obama is trying to keep
information from Americans about which fighters he is releasing and the
threats they still pose.
Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has written of "a consistent and concerted effort
by the Administration to prevent Americans from knowing the truth regarding
terrorist activities and affiliations of past and present Guantanamo
detainees."
Assuming there ever were any genuinely innocent people rounded up
accidentally from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, they were
released long ago. When the Obama administration took over, many in the
Bush administration warned that those remaining at Gitmo were "the worst of the worst." Releasing these dedicated
jihadists has led to predictable results.
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Saudi
Arabia's Mohammed bin Nayef Center for Counseling and Care has a dismal
success rate rehabilitating jihadists.
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Some have been released to Saudi Arabia where they are sent to the Mohammed bin Nayef Center for Counseling and Care. Here
they are involuntarily enrolled in the kingdom's terrorism rehabilitation
and de-programming center, allegedly purged of their fondness for jihad and
transformed into productive members of society through different kinds of
therapy and "structured debate."
The recidivism of the bin Nayef Center is probably higher than that of
Gitmo. According to a CBS report, a September 2014 arrest of 88 Al-Qaeda
operatives had 59 graduates; later that year when 77 were arrested for an
attack on a Saudi Shiite mosque, 44 of them were discovered to be bin Nayef alumni.
Other parolees have been sent to Qatar, Senegal, the UAE,
Palau, and Ghana. Rep. Edward Royce (R-CA) has written that the Obama "administration is
releasing dangerous terrorists to countries that can't control them, and misleading
Congress in the process."
In 2014 six jihadists were sent to Uruguay, among many predictions of
bad things to come. One of the men, Jihad Ahmad Diyab, has disappeared in Brazil — timing many find perilously
close to the upcoming Olympic Games.
What possible benefit could any society derive from releasing a member
of the Manson family or a man who killed his grandmother with a hammer? And
what possible value can come from releasing committed jihadists to nations
that cannot control them or track them if they disappear?
A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the
Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of
Technology.
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