The "innocent"

Another reformed Jihadist, this time from the Saudi programme. Ahmed al-Shayea drove a truck bomb into Baghdad on Christmas Day, 2004. Somehow, he walked away with only his fingers missing and burns to his face.

When they first contacted him,he was 19, unemployed and very devout. He travelled to Iraq via Syria. He was told to "deliver" a truck with 26 tons of butane gas to a place near the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. He wasn't told that it was rigged to explode.

At first, he was taken to as a victim, but in hospital he confessed all. Now he wants others to know.

He is, in one sense, an innocent. But he went to Baghdad at the behest of al-Queda in order to wreak havoc, just not on himself. The Saudis have turned him round ("There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death"), but do they ask themselves why his devoutness was so easily transformed into homicidal action?

(via Hot Air Headlines)