Iraq suicide bomber was Gitmo detainee from U.K.
50-year-old freed at Britain’s behest ups fears about security.
A suicide bomber LONDON — who attacked a military base in Iraq this week was a former Guantanamo Bay detainee freed in 2004 after Britain lobbied for his release, raising questions about the ability of security services to track the whereabouts of potential terrorists.
The Islamic State identified the bomber as Abu Zakariya al-Britani, and two British security officials also confirmed he was a 50-yearold Briton formerly known as Ronald Fiddler and as Jamal al-Harith.
He was one of 16 men paid a total of more than $12 million in compensation in 2010, when the British government settled a lawsuit alleging its intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the officials.
Al-Harith was a web designer and convert to Islam when he set off on a visit to a religious retreat in Pakistan in October 2001. He said he was warned the country was not safe due to deep anti-British and American sentiment in the days before the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, and decided to return to Europe via Iran and Turkey.
Instead, he said he was detained at gunpoint near the border with Afghanistan and turned over to the Taliban, which charged him with being a British spy, beat him and threw him in jail. A couple of months later he was liberated by the Northern Alliance and allowed to call home.
He told his family he would be back soon, but instead was turned over to the Americans and sent to Guantanamo Bay.
Like many other detainees, he claimed he was tortured there.
He was released in March 2004 along with four other British detainees who had been held for up to two years over their alleged links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Hardship followed him to his native Manchester, England, said his sister, Maxine Fiddler. He struggled to find work.
“Once you’ve been labeled (as a terrorist) people always say there’s something there, and that’s stopped him from getting a job,” Fiddler said in a 2007 interview.
Al-Harith and 15 others had sued the British government, alleging it knew about or was complicit in their treatment while in the custody of U.S. forces.
Alex Carlile, Britain’s former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said al-Harith’s case was settled to avoid disclosing sensitive documents in a court battle.
“Plainly he was a terrorist and he was a potentially dangerous terrorist,” Carlile told the BBC.
Monday’s suicide bombing raises questions about how a person clearly on the radar of security officials might have left Britain and traveled to the Middle East without raising the attention of the security services.
Arthur Snell, a former head of the Prevent program, which is part of the Britain’s counterterrorism strategy, said the authorities clearly had lost track of him.
“It’s obvious that collectively, the authorities — and obviously I have some personal responsibility there — we failed to be aware of what Fiddler was up to,” the told the BBC.