This is a story that doesn’t make you go “Hmm.” It makes you go, “WTF?”
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.
So, if this guy is a simple businessman, and utterly innocent, the immediate question that comes to mind is: Is every home in Yemen equipped with grenades for children to play with? Or just the ones who are innocent Gitmo detainees?
You know, all the kids I know in this country who play with grenades play with ones made of, oh, I don’t know, plastic? With maybe the kind that have a little bit of metal so you can shoot off caps with them?
Something tells me this guy isn’t nearly as innocent as he says he is.
Hi
I served in the IDF, Golani, spent most of 1983 in Lebanon. Several times I came home (my sister’s, in Rishon) on weekends in full battle garb, which meant rifle and pack with 8 more clips and two grenades. Her boys were then around 5 & 3. The first time my sister found my pack on the floor not long after I got in she shut the door to “my room” and when I was there next (probably out of the shower, memory on this is faint as to the exact, but it was later that same) she made me put it up on the shelf in the closet, which was the right thing to do, it taught me and it convinced the teacher in her that i was thereafter aware, and there were no incidents/tragedies like unto that in Yemen in her house.
The boys are now 30ish and married and fathers, one was a tankist, the other in Handassah like his father. I encouraged Golani, but they just laughed and said they remembered how I used to look when I came in on weekends and wanted nothing to do with that kind of life!
So you never know why a person might have weapons in their home. Legitimate reasons abound. That said, there are precautions that must be taken when children might have access.
Good Shabbos.
Ruven