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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJonathan Idema, Con Man and Afghan Bounty Hunter, Dies at 55
Jonathan K. Idema, a convicted con man who gained notoriety in post-invasion Afghanistan as a swaggering hunter of terrorists, then ignominy when he was imprisoned for taking Afghans hostage and torturing them, died Jan. 21 at his home in Bacalar, Mexico. He was 55.
Penny Alesi, a former girlfriend, said the cause was AIDS. A State Department spokesman confirmed the death.
Mr. Idema was a fast-talking, sunglasses-wearing, AK-47-toting fortune hunter and a flamboyant figure in Kabul, the capital, in the early 2000s. He flaunted his experience as a member of the Armys Special Forces, or Green Berets. and let on that he was in cahoots with American and Afghan intelligence officials as he pursued the big rewards offered for leaders of Al Qaeda. He cultivated the news media, often with tall tales.
He provided broadcasters with videotape of supposed terrorist training camps; was interviewed as a covert operative by National Public Radio and Fox News; and insinuated himself into a book by the author Robin Moore, The Hunt for Bin Laden. Few knew he had served three years in federal prison in the 1990s on 58 counts of fraud. That information came out in 2004 when he was tried in Afghanistan for imprisoning and torturing eight men in a private jail that he and his civilian colleagues ran in the hope of getting information about terrorists and bounty money. (They wore uniforms with the American flag on the sleeves and called themselves Task Force Saber 7.) The case was widely compared to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/asia/jonathan-idema-con-man-and-afghan-bounty-hunter-dies-at-55.html?_r=1&hpw
ret5hd
(20,518 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)But, for all of Mr. Idema's inside information about so many things, he had no idea why President Karzai would pardon him after being convicted for being a giant, puckered asshole. And he similarly couldn't say why the Afghan government (operating all freely and independently, I'm sure) had set him up in an apartment after springing him.
Thankfully for all concerned, the U.S. Department of Justice never investigated any of Mr. Idema's shenanigans or even apparently took any notice of him at all, so he could expire in comfort and security in Mexico.