I knew it was those damn Swedes. First they distribute millions of crappy chairs and bookcases designed to collapse and injure non-Swedes throughout the world through those ridiculously large and ugly IKEA warehouses. Now they are blowing up buses in Bulgaria. This means war. We should cut off their oil supplies and close down all of their IKEAs before it is too late. Time to send 4 aircraft carriers to the Baltic and intimidate those dastardly Swedes.
I wonder if the dude’s three year stay in Guantanamo made him a little angry? The Swedes hate us for our freedom, you know.
Alleged Mastermind Behind Israel Bus Explosion Identified As Swedish National Mehdi Ghezali
Submitted by Tyler Durdenon 07/19/2012 12:03 -0400
The latest development in yesterday’s Bulgarian bus bomb explosion, is the identification of the alleged bomber. According to Times of Israel he is Mehdi Ghezali, “reportedly a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins. He had been held at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detainment camp on Cuba from 2002 to 2004, having previously studied at a Muslim religious school and mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He was also reportedly among 12 foreigners captured trying to cross into Afghanistan in 2009.”
There’s more:
Sofia also reported that the Bulgarian Interior Ministry managed to recover the fingerprints of the bomber, which they submitted to the FBI in the United States and the international police organization Interpol. The FBI and CIA joined Israeli and Bulgarian officials in investigating the attack.
Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told Sofia that DNA tests were being run to determine the identity of the Caucasian man, who the minister described as casually dressed with nothing suspicious about his appearance to set him apart from the crowd of people at the airport.
What is curious is that this is not the first time Mehdi has made headline news. Below is a lengthy exposition on the Swede from 2009 via the Weekly Standard:
With a black baseball cap pulled tight over a mop of stringy long hair and a patchy, close-cropped beard, Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali looked more like a Metallica roadie than a disciple of Ayman al-Zawahiri. He addressed the scrum of reporters in a clipped, heavily accented Swedish and accused the American government of wrongly detaining him for three years and “physically and mentally” torturing him. A book about his experiences was in the works; a documentary crew, cobbling together a film about American human rights abuses, had requested an audience; and his legal team was plotting a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld. It was 2004, and Ghezali was a free man.
In late 2001, Ghezali, a Swedish national, had been detained during the battle at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, handed over to the American military, and sent to the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. According to his lawyers, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although he spoke none of the local languages, Ghezali told his captors, in the midst of the Taliban’s retreat into the mountainous hinterlands of Afghanistan, he had crossed that country’s border with Pakistan to study Islam.
After an intense lobbying effort by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson–and a vague promise that the country’s intelligence services would keep a watchful eye on him–Ghezali was delivered to Sweden (on the government’s private Gulfstream jet). The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter noted that Ghezali had achieved “rock star status” upon returning to his homeland, a native victim of America’s rapacious imperialism. And after two-plus years in isolation, the emotionally fragile former prisoner would be happy to discover “that a majority of Swedes were glad that he was home.”
That his story was threaded with head-scratching omissions and inexplicable gaps in chronology–the years in Cuba were, apparently, not enough time to concoct a consistent narrative–seemed to have little effect on his credibility. To his supporters, he was merely a bit player in a larger morality play. But even his most credulous supporters winced when, during a press conference in his hometown of Örebro, Ghezali offered the following opinion of Osama bin Laden: “I don’t know him as a person and therefore can’t pass judgment on him. I don’t believe what the Americans say about him.”
Sweden’s justice minister ruled out prosecuting Ghezali, and the story faded from the public consciousness. But in a country with a significant Muslim minority, it was perhaps inevitable that the foreign ministry would find itself in a similar situation again.
In 2007, the Swedish government interceded on behalf of 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, a Stockholm native and convert to Islam, after she was arrested and jailed by the Ethiopian military, then battling Somali Islamists. Ethiopian officials told Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, that Benaouda had fled Somalia after the defeat of the Islamic Courts Union, on whose behalf she was accused of waging jihad, and had been detained with other fighters after crossing the border into Kenya.
According to the Stockholm-based newspaper Aftonbladet, Swedish diplomats engaged in “discreet meetings with the Pentagon, tribal leaders, and African government officials” to secure her release. Benaouda’s mother, chairman of the Muslim Council of Sweden, wrote that her daughter was questioned by members of the CIA and beaten by guards–accusations amplified by the Associated Press. After her release, Benaouda went further, claiming that she was tortured in custody, a measure “planned and orchestrated by the Americans or other western interrogators.” The claim ensured her permanent victim status in Sweden.
The cases of Ghezali and Benaouda–frequently invoked in the Swedish media as examples of America’s tyrannical war on terror–were unrelated. There was no indication that the two had ever met or that they belonged to the same Scandinavian cell of Islamic militants. But the two innocents abroad, curious students of fundamentalist Islam, would soon find each other.
According to reports in the Swedish media, Ghezali and Benaouda were arrested last week in Pakistan–together, travelling with a multinational group of extremists–having crossed the border from Iran on their way to the al Qaeda stronghold of Waziristan. Pakistani sources claim that the group was carrying $50,000 in cash, maps indicating Western embassies, and–every religion student’s best friend–an explosives belt. One of the suspects, according to a report in the Swedish newspaper Expressen, chewed up the SIM card of his cell phone before he was taken into custody.
flash says:
Dam”n kids today, can’t even take a few years of torture without going all crazy.
Take John McCain for example…got tortured and it ain’t never hurt him none.
Ol’ hot dawging Johnny would have been a hoot for Prez….jus’ sayin”..
sheesh…..
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19th July 2012 at 1:00 pm
Idiot Of The Month says:
If the Israelis continue to push Iran on this issue then it will become clear that the Syrian “uprising” is about weakening Iran’s strategic position prior to attack. That’s the price you pay for being near the Russian belly and make no mistakes: Russia is the prize.
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19th July 2012 at 1:14 pm
PlatoPlubius says:
@ Idiot
Don’t forget Russia’s naval base and sphere of influence in Syria. Destabilizing Syria and putting in a Western puppet might be interpreted as an act of war. and considering Russia has adopted a foreign policy like the U.S. of preemption
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19th July 2012 at 3:23 pm
Zarathustra says:
“According to reports in the Swedish media, Ghezali and Benaouda were arrested last week in Pakistan–together, travelling with a multinational group of extremists–having crossed the border from Iran on their way to the al Qaeda stronghold of Waziristan.”
This nails it. Bomb the fuck out of Iran.
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19th July 2012 at 6:44 pm
DaveL says:
The bomber’s license said he was a fagot?
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19th July 2012 at 9:53 pm
flash says:
DaveL says:
The bomber’s license said he was a fagot?
Dave, probably an old goat fucker to boot , but too late for your benefit.
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19th July 2012 at 7:02 am
Zarathustra says:
Imagine this piece of shit as the next Secretary of State:
Bolton to Israel: Time to Finally ‘Retaliate’ Against Iran
Friday, 20 Jul 2012 08:38 AM
By Greg McDonald
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton is urging Israel to attack Iran in retaliation for the killing of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, saying the time has come for the Jewish state to quit threatening and take action.
“This is obviously a very dangerous period for Israel with the civil war in Syria, refugees reported going across the border into Lebanon, and Hezbollah well armed with rockets on Israel’s northern border,” Bolton told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Thursday night. “So I think if there were ever a time to retaliate, and directly against Iran this time, this is it.”
American and Israeli officials on Thursday linked the suicide bomber who killed the Israeli tourists to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is clearly backed by Iran.
“This was a tit for tat,” one American official told the New York Times, suggesting the attack on the tourists in Bulgaria was a response to he assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, for which Tehran blamed Israel.
Bolton, however, said the tourist bus bombing in Bulgaria was not just “a tit for tat operation” initiated by Iran, but was timed for “maximum effect.”
He noted, for example, that the Bulgaria killings coincided with the 18th anniversary of a bombing against Israelis in Buenos Aires and comes as new tensions with Iran are building over its efforts to develop a nuclear-weapons program.
“I mean, this is clearly — it was timed for its max effect. And that’s why I think Israel is perfectly entitled to respond,” said Bolton, now a Fox News contributor. “It’s not just a tit-for- tat operation. This is self-defense, to dissuade Iran, if it’s susceptible of rational calculation, not to do this again.”
Calling Iran “the central banker of terrorism,” Bolton said things would only get worse for Israel and the rest of the world “once they get nuclear weapons.”
“If Israel waits until Iran gets nuclear weapons and then Iran continues to engage in these kinds of terrorist attacks, Iran really can do it with impunity because Israel risks a nuclear response from Iran,” he said, noting that the Jewish state is “entitled to stop the attacks at their source.”
Turning to the situation in Syria, Bolton said he wasn’t surprised at China and Russia’s veto Thursday of U.N. sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
“It was a mistake to believe that the United Nations was ever going to have any impact on Syria,” Bolton told Van Susteren. “The Russians are committed to Assad.”
Bolton said it was important to remember Iran “is also a major backer of the Assad regime,” which is yet another reason, he suggested, that Israel should act.
“Their hands are in every area of difficulty in the region and nearby,” he added
Read more on Newsmax.com: Bolton to Israel: Time to Finally ‘Retaliate’ Against Iran
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!
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19th July 2012 at 9:56 pm