The Guantanamo Bay detention facility is important for intelligence purposes and must be kept open, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant of President Donald Trump's, said Wednesday, responding to news that an ISIS suicide bomber in Iraq was a former Gitmo detainee.
"The president has been really explicit that Gitmo is a very, very important tool," Gorka told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.
"Beyond just the question of a detention facility or tribunals, it's also important to understand that Guantanamo Bay is an incredibly important intelligence asset. You look at the things that we have managed to achieve based upon the intelligence gleaned from the prisoners there."
The suicide attack was carried out near Mosul by a British terrorist who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay in 2002.
The family of 50-year-old Jamal al-Harith, who was born Ronald Fiddler, identified him as the man ISIS showed in photographs taken just before the attack. Al-Haith was was not only freed from the Cuban detention center in 2004, but he was paid the equivalent of $1.25 million by the United Kingdom government after he claimed British agents knew he was being mistreated while still in custody.
He had been taken to Gitmo after he was found in an Afghanistan prison in 2002, where he was placed by the Taliban who believed he was a British spy. A relative said the detainee's thought Americans were there to save him, but instead, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay after it was determined that he'd tried to join the Taliban.
Gorka said he was not surprised that al-Harith had been a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, as at least 30 if not more than 40 percent of those released end up rejoining the ranks of the terrorists.
"President [Barack] Obama released lots and lots of people that were there for a very good reason," said Gorka. "Almost half the time they returned to the battlefield. This individual, not only was he released, he was given compensation of more than $1 million by the British government, and then he goes and executes a suicide attack in Iraq."
Also on Wednesday, Gorka spoke out against a front-page profile article about him in The Washington Post, calling it "fake news."
"I got lots of phone calls from friends, former colleagues saying 'these reporters talked to me for hours but never quoted me.' Why? Because they had nothing bad to say about me," said Gorka.
"So this is fake news. They are attacking me based upon people I have never met."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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