Now I See The Error of My Ways

Up to this point I must confess I’ve had difficulty perceiving the big, tragic problem with holding jihadi terrorists in Guantanamo. But this news report has opened my eyes:

Grenade accident kills Yemen Gitmo detainee’s sons

SAN’A, Yemen (AP) — The two young sons of a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo died when a grenade they were playing with accidentally detonated inside their home, a human rights lawyer and the detainee’s brother said Thursday.

The two boys were the sons of Guantanamo prisoner #1463, Abdelsalam al-Hilah, a businessman who was captured in Cairo in 2002 and sent to Guantanamo on charges of terrorism, said Ahmed Irman of the Hood Organization for Defending Human Rights, an organization that advocates for Guantanamo detainees in Yemen.

The children, Youssef, 11, and Omar, 10, were playing unsupervised with the grenade in a room in the house when it exploded. It is unclear why the grenade was in the house.

I see now. If this “businessman” hadn’t been held in Guantanamo, he would have been there to instruct his boys in the proper handling of hand-grenades and other high explosives. What kind of system have we created in which young Yemeni men are left to learn bomb-making on their own?

How are pizza parlors in Tel Aviv, fruit markets in Baghdad, and girls schools in Kabul going to be become scenes of Allah-pleasing carnage if we keep mentors like Mr. Al-Hilah locked up?

We must think about the children.