To liberals, Mohammed al Alami, or as he was known then, Mohammed Laalami, was one of those sad oppressed people locked up for no reason in Guantanamo Bay.
Mohammed al Alami claimed that he only confessed to Al Qaeda ties after being "captured and being beaten and threatened with death… "I have spoken with a lawyer here and the Red Cross in Kandahar. I and others were being beaten and admitted to things that were not true."
Instead he claimed that he had gone to Afghanistan on a pilgrimage. But he admitted to interrogators that he had been with the Moroccan Islamic Fighting Group, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, linked to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, whose release mediated by the Muslim Brotherhood led to the Libyan Civil War. And he had originally planned to fight with the LIFG as well.
The MIFG was responsible for the 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people in Spain. American officials warned against freeing Mohammed al Alami, but he was released back to Morocco… which then released him.
And Al Alami made his way to Syria still doing what he really loved… killing people in the name of Islam.
One of them was killed during the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham-led [ISIS] offensive in Latakia during the summer, whose sole aim was to strike a symbolic victory against the Assad regime by capturing and ethnically cleansing Assad's ancestral village of Qardaḥa, while clearing out a number of Alawite localities on the way. The goal was to reach Qardaḥa by Eid al-Fiṭr (as Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wanted) so that the mujahideen could hold prayers in the village.
The Moroccan ex-Gitmo detainee killed in question was known by the nom de guerre of Abu Hamza al-Maghrebi. One of the first local Syrian pro-ISIS outlets to report his death was Maysar, based in Aleppo and using the FSA flag in its logo but ideologically aligned with ISIS.
The Islamic State of Iraq is Al Qaeda.
Some excerpts from the eulogy:
"Abu Hamza al-Maghrebi, just as he knew the arena of jihad in Afghanistan and in Bilad ash-Sham…a young man from the youth of this Ummah who saw his life in aiding the religion of God- mighty and exalted is He- and hastened to jihad in Afghanistan, eschewing his wealth and his sons….imprisoned for five years in the prisons of the Americans in Guantánamo…he did not reform or change…then he hastened to Bilad ash-Sham…There was in his heart love of Islam and the Muslims; there was nothing in his heart besides love of the religion of God- mighty and exalted is He."
Not to mention love of killing people.
The second Moroccan ex-Gitmo detainee in question is one Ibrahim bin Shakaran. He is actually the one who gives the funeral eulogy for Abu Hamza al-Maghrebi and is described in the video as the leader of Harakat Sham al-Islam.
You know if we bomb Syria now, bin Shakaran, another MIFG member, might not get his chance to be blown up.