From ‘Gitmo Poet’ to Qaeda Kingpin

A former Guantanamo de tainee has emerged as a leading ideologue and theo logian for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — one of the strongest al Qaeda affiliates in the world.

Pakistani authorities captured Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish in late 2001 and handed him over to US officials, who transferred him to Guantanamo. Rubaish was held there until Dec. 13, 2006, when he was sent to Saudi Arabia and placed in the Saudi rehabilitation program for jihadists. At some point, he escaped and fled south to Yemen, along with several other ex-Gitmoites.

In February, the Saudis placed Rubaish, and at least 10 other ex-Gitmo detainees, on its list of 85 most-wanted terrorists.

Rubaish has become an influential proponent of waging jihad against the Saudi royals. According to a Jamestown Foundation analysis, he has risen to the rank of mufti within al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — playing the crucial role of providing theological justifications for the organization's terrorism.

In November, Rubaish questioned Saudi King Abdullah's decision to allow men and women to jointly attend the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. In a translation prepared by the SITE Intelligence group, Rubaish blasted the decision as a violation of sha ria law and said that King Abdullah was moving his country toward “secularism.” He wrote: “I call upon every Muslim to [distance himself] from this apostate government, which has clearly demonstrated that it prefers infidelity to faith.”

His sentiments have been used to justify al Qaeda's targeting of senior Saudi officials. After a suicide bomber in August failed to kill Prince Muhammad bin Nayif, the deputy minister of the interior for security affairs, Rubaish released a tape justifying the attempt by arguing that assassinations have been a commonly accepted tool of Islamic warfare since the days of the Prophet Mohammed.

Rubaish also pointed to Nayif's relationship with America: “Muhammad bin Nayif stood alongside his troops guarding and protecting the Americans, preventing the mujahedin from reaching them. He could have assumed the role of a bystander but instead defended them, just as a good child defends his father's possessions.”

There's a distinct irony in Rubaish's role as al Qaeda's chief anti-Saudi mufti. At his Administrative Review Board hearing at Gitmo, he was asked about his desire to wage jihad against the Saudi government and America. His answer was a rhetorical question: “Before I mentioned that the United States is a partner with Saudi Arabia, so how could I consider it an enemy of Islam if it's a friend of Saudi Arabia?”

Thus, Rubaish denied that he wanted to wage jihad against either America or Saudi Arabia. This is a demonstrable lie, given his current role as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's chief anti-Saudi theologian and his loud condemnation of the relationship between the Saudi government and America.

During the hearing, he also made important admissions. He conceded that he was trained at al Qaeda's al Farouq camp — but claimed that he didn't know it was an al Qaeda facility. This is an implausible excuse, given that al Farouq was one of al Qaeda's chief training facilities in pre-9/11 Afghanistan.

A profile of Rubaish published by the NEFA Foundation notes another piece of evidence US officials amassed against him, found on an al Qaeda Web site. “In January 2002,” NEFA's profile explains, Rubaish's “name was listed as No. 39 on the roster published by the al Qaeda Web site Al Neda of Arab mujahedin who had been double-crossed by tribal leaders and taken prisoner in Pakistan.”

In 2007, Marc Falkoff, a lawyer for a number of the Guantanamo detainees, published a book titled “Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak.” In an interview on NPR, he was asked: “If you could pick one poem that most speaks to you and is most moving to you, which one would it be?” Falkoff chose “Ode to the Sea,” by Ibrahim al Rubaish.

After reading part of the poem, Falkoff explained: “What you have here is a poem in which the poet is talking with the sea. And he's suggesting that the sea is complicit in his continued incarceration. To me, his accusations against the sea are really very much accusations to the American public. You know what's going on in Guantanamo. You've now been told about the abuses here. And what are you doing? You're standing idly by. We're still here. We still haven't had our day in court. We still aren't treated with respect. You can save us, but you've chosen to do nothing.”

Rubaish was released from Guantanamo and returned to jihad in short order. His proclamations are now recorded and published by al Qaeda's multimedia operation and various other jihadist Web sites. Rubaish's words are routinely used as propaganda to inspire would-be al Qaeda members to follow the path of jihad.

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Adapted from longwarjournal.com.