Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has released a new video featuring a former Guantanamo detainee, Ibrahim Qosi, who is also known as Sheikh Khubayb al Sudani.

On July 7, 2010, al Qosi agreed to a plea deal in a U.S. military commission that facilitated  his transfer back to the Middle East. In exchange for agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, al Qosi received a suspended sentence that required him to serve two more years at Guantanamo, where he had been detained for eight years. He was released in July of 2012, and returned to his home country of Sudan.

At the time of the plea deal, the media concentrated on menial jobs he performed for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but in truth he was a seasoned jihadist. Abu Zubaydah testified that al Qosi was a close and trusted associate of Bin Laden.

al Qosi joined AQAP some months after he returned to Sudan, and rose to a leadership position. The group, and al Qosi, support Jihad as “correct”.  In the video, Long War Journal reports:

Qosi referred to al Qaeda’s policy of encouraging attacks by individual adherents and smaller terror cells. Indeed, AQAP’s video celebrates jihadists who have acted in accordance with this call, such as the Kouachi brothers, who struck Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris earlier this year. The Kouachi brothers’ operation was sponsored by AQAP.

The al Qaeda veterans shown in the video emphasized the importance of following the advice of recognized jihadist ideologues. Although AQAP’s men do not mention the Islamic State by name, they clearly have Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s group in mind. Al Qaeda has criticized the Islamic State for failing to follow the teachings of widely respected jihadist authorities, most of whom reject the legitimacy of Baghdadi’s self-declared “caliphate.”

Qosi’s appearance marks the first time he has starred in jihadist propaganda since he left Guantanamo. His personal relationship with Osama bin Laden and time in American detention make him an especially high-profile spokesman.

Read the complete report, by Thomas Joscelyn, who is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.

The Obama plan to close Guantanamo certainly has borne fruit – rotten fruit.