Former detainee Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi wrote poetry while at Guantanamo Bay, making puns out of American legal terms like 'Miranda' while he was held there.

The Kuwaiti national was released in 2005.

In 2006, Al-Ajami's poems were read in a "Guantanamo teach-in" sponsored by Seton Hall Law School. Many U.S. attorneys and civil rights activists participated in the event.

In her piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "From Gitmo to Miranda, With Love," Debra Burlingame writes:  

Marc Falkoff, a former Covington & Burling attorney-turned-law-professor who represents several detainees, read the poems and later published a selection of them in a book ("Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak," Iowa University Press, 2007.) In his introductory remarks to the students, Mr. Falkoff described Al-Ajmi and the other detainee poets as "gentle, thoughtful young men" who, though frustrated and disillusioned, expressed an abiding hope in the future.

"One thing you won't hear is hatred," he [i.e. lawyer Mark Falkoff] said, "and the reason you won't hear it is not because I edited it out, it's because it's not there in the poetry."

The irony — no, the outrage — is not lost on Burlingame, who also tells us how many people Al-Ajmi killed last Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008.

A recent martyrdom video published on a password-protected al Qaeda Web site indicates that Al-Ajmi carried out the March 23 attack on an Iraqi army compound in Mosul.

In that attack, an armored truck loaded with an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives rammed through a fortified gate, overturned vehicles in its path and exploded in the center of the compound. The huge blast ripped the façade off three apartment buildings being used as barracks, killing 13 soldiers from the 2nd Iraqi Army division and seriously wounding 42 others.

So, why did this terrorist get out of Gitmo? Read the whole piece — also reprinted with additional photographs and still video images, here. 

(Photo Credit: Bill Roggio / The Long War Journal — Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi killed 13 people in this March 23 truck bombing in Mosul, Iraq—after he was released from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay)

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