Within hours of taking his oath of office in 2009, President Obama promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility housing captured terrorists and terror suspects. Obama has not been able to fulfill that promise.
But while he hasn’t closed Gitmo, Obama has opened doors to a number of detention cells there, allowing terror fighters to go back to the Middle East. And now, to paraphrase the infamous words of Jeremiah Wright, those angry chickens are coming home to roost.
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Fox News is now reporting that a number of the released Gitmo detainees are suspected of returning to the battlefield, joining forces with and fighting for ISIS and other terrorist organizations in Syria…this on Obama’s watch.
As many as 20 to 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees released within the last two to three years are suspected by intelligence and Defense officials of having joined forces with the Islamic State and other militant groups inside Syria, Fox News has learned.
The development has cemented fears that the U.S. military would once again encounter militants taken off the battlefield.
Defense officials also tell Fox News that some former Gitmo prisoners don’t take up arms per se, but support the Islamic State in other important ways.
A number of former detainees also have chosen to help these groups from outside the country, financing operations and supporting their propaganda campaigns.
The Washington Post recently reported that authorities were investigating whether the ISIS terrorist seen beheading American journalist James Foley may himself have been a former Gitmo detainee.
A European intelligence official said the British government was examining the video, and the speech of the purported executioner, to compare it with former Guantanamo Bay prisoners and other British residents believed to have joined the Islamic State.
Both prisoners in the video are wearing orange shirts and pants, similar to orange jumpsuits worn by detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The latest figures compiled from Defense Department and other sources put the number of detainees still in Gitmo at around 150