McClatchy: Gitmo Radicalizes Detainees

So much for Guantanamo making us safer -- it's practically a terrorist factory. It shouldn't surprise anyone; just as gangs recruit within prisons, terrorist orgs recruit within Gitmo.

This is just part of an ongoing series on Guantanamo by McClatchy. If you haven't done it yet, get on over and read it. It's a real eye-opener and the sort of good old fashioned journalism you don't see much anymore.

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles. U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he'd made connections to high-level militants. In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with Osama bin Laden at the top — Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.