Yesterday Front Page Magazine reported that President Obama has released Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri from Guantanamo Bay detention center and sent him to Saudi Arabia as a free man.

The article reports:

Walid bin Attash, a planner of the USS Cole bombing and who also played a role in the 9/11 attack, is still at Gitmo. His trial continues to drag on while he and his lawyers play games. Rahim Hussein al-Nashiri, another of the planners, is still awaiting trial. But Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri, one of the members of the USS Cole cell, has already been released by Barack Obama from Guantanamo Bay.

Sabri was rated as a high risk terrorist who is ”is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies”, but that was no obstacle for Obama who had already fired one Secretary of Defense for being slow to free dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists and was browbeating his latest appointee over the same issue. 

The very paperwork that was used as the basis for the decision to free Sabri describes him as “a member of a Yemeni al-Qaida cell directly involved with the USS Cole attack”. This cell “conducted surveillance” on the targeted vessel and “prepared explosives for the bombing”. Sabri had been arrested in Yemen for his involvement in the attack before he managed to make his way to Afghanistan.

Now he is a free man and has been sent back to the homeland of terrorism, Saudi Arabia.

After praising the “beautiful religious tradition” of Islam, which the USS Cole terrorists had “twisted”, President Clinton had promised that, “America will not stop standing guard”. 

But under him, it never even started standing guard. 

I understand that President Obama made a promise to close down the detention center at Guantanamo before he leaves office, but his actions are putting American soldiers at risk. The recidivism rate of Guantanamo prisoners has been disputed–claims range from less than 20 percent to over 80 percent. Either way, the death of any American soldiers at the hands of former Guantanamo prisoners is totally unacceptable. Congress needs to take action against these continuing prisoner releases. American lives are at stake.