Burying the Lede

Not much gets by Ed Morrissey, including this jaw dropping bit of news buried deep in an L.A. Times article he links at his post:

In Washington, the Justice Department said Friday that three more Guantanamo detainees had been transferred.

The detainees were sent back to Saudi Arabia, their home country, where officials will review their cases before sending them to a rehabilitation program. One of them was identified as Ahmed Zuhair, a relatively high profile detainee who, has been protesting his detention since 2005 through a hunger strike and has been force-fed liquid nutrients.

So why were we holding Zuhair? Read on.

During a hearing in Guantanamo in October 2004, Zuhair was accused of involvement in the 1995 killing in Bosnia-Herzegovina of William Jefferson, a U.S. official with the United Nations. At the tribunal, U.S. officials said Jefferson's watch was found on Zuhair.

Zuhair also was convicted in absentia by a Bosnian court in a 1997 car bombing in the town of Mostar. He also allegedly told another detainee he was involved in the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000, according to evidence presented at a Guantanamo proceeding.

You have to read through 12 paragraphs before we get to that little tidbit. Go ahead and click the link and count for yourself. It's almost as if the Times would rather not mention it, doncha think? The news does raise a couple of questions.

First, how the hell do you "rehabilitate" someone with a track record of murder, car bombing and attacking a U.S. ship?

Second, if they won't keep a dude like this in custody, who will they keep?

Finally, who really thinks it's a good idea to do this?

These questions aren't necessarily rhetorical. Maybe one of my alert readers has a good explanation, but the rationale for this decision surely doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Put another way, it really beats my pair of jacks, as P. J. O'Rourke would say.

Oh, make sure to read Ed's take on the matter, too.