The smiling British terrorist who blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq said he had such hatred for his American captors while being held in Guantanamo Bay that he wanted to spit in their faces.
“The American soldier was taking off my chains [and] I wanted to spit in his face but you have to hold yourself inside,” Jamal al-Harith told a British TV station shortly after his release from the US prison in Cuba in 2004.
Al-Harith, who received a seven-figure payout from the British government after claiming their agents knew he been mistreated at Guantanamo, was among a number of Islamic State terrorists who detonated explosives on Monday at an Iraqi military base near Mosul.
Al-Harith, who was born Ronald Fiddler and lived in Manchester, England, before converting to Islam in his 20s, received a million-pound settlement – about $1.25 million dollars, according to several reports.
He told the interviewer he would have liked to sue the US, too, but was informed it would be a long shot.
“I would like to sue them but the soundings I’m getting back is that it might not be possible to sue them in American courts because they see Cuba as a legal black hole … but if you are a not an American citizen in Guantanamo no international law applies at all,” he said during the 2004 appearance on BBC North West Tonight.
He denied being a terrorist and said the Americans said they checked his background but nothing came back to implicate him — “not even a parking ticket.”
But according to documents from the US Defense Department, al-Harith was held at Guantanamo for his connections to al Qaeda terrorists and because he “possesse[d] a high threat to the US, its interests and allies.”