Investors Business Daily, Editorial, May 29, 2008

Why are we catching terrorists, only to watch our Muslim-nation allies release them? The leniency looks a lot like betrayal, perhaps even state sponsorship of terrorism.

After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush vowed to hold accountable any state that gives aid and comfort to terrorists. He also said not a single terrorist in the world would rest easy, that they’d be hunted down like the animals they are.

“Every terrorist must be made to live as an international fugitive with no place to settle or organize,” he said, “no place to hide, no governments to hide behind and not even a safe place to sleep.”

Seven years later, the terrorists are finding a lot of governments in the Middle East and South Asia to hide behind — governments we too readily assume are “allies” in the war on Islamic terror.

And today a lot of anti-American terrorists are sleeping peacefully, outside the bars of justice and under the aegis of these two-faced governments we call “friends.” Here’s a rundown:

Pakistan: Islamabad last month freed a top Taliban leader who was caught fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 9/11.

The release of Maulana Sufi Muhammad was supposed to help buy peace among militants in the lawless tribal area. But a similar 2006 amnesty deal involving hundreds of imprisoned terrorists from the region only emboldened their attacks on U.S. troops.

In December, Pakistani authorities let a major al-Qaida terrorist wanted by British police in connection with the transatlantic sky terror plot conveniently escape just weeks before he was scheduled to be extradited to Britain for questioning and prosecution in the conspiracy to blow up 10 airliners over U.S. cities.

Rashid Rauf, who fled while attending a mosque, remains at large.

Then there’s Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of an al-Qaida subcontractor in Pakistan. He is no longer under house arrest, and is editing a militant newspaper in Karachi.

Moreover, U.S. officials are still stewing over Pakistan’s release last year of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a top al-Qaida operative whom the U.S. persuaded Pakistan to arrest in connection with a plot to target U.S. financial buildings.

Islamabad risks further straining ties by turning over U.S. “spies” for the CIA to Iran. U.S. officials are protesting the move, arguing the local recruits have been helpful in tracking al-Qaida figures trying to move through the Baluchistan region of Pakistan to Iran.

After 9/11, Washington waived all nuclear and coup-related sanctions and restrictions against Pakistan, and has pumped more than $10 billion into its military and economy. And these are the thanks we get.

Yemen: All the defendants convicted in the attack on the USS Cole eight years ago have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni authorities. And at least two have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq.

Jamal al-Badawi, the al-Qaida mastermind behind the bombing, was secretly released by the government last fall, even though he previously had broken out of prison twice.

Yemeni authorities recently jailed him again only after Washington found out he was free. But they refuse to extradite him — or his Yemeni-American partner, Jaber Elbaneh — despite the fact they’ve been indicted for murder in U.S. courts and despite a personal plea by FBI chief Robert Mueller during a visit to Sana last month.

Al-Badawi and Elbaneh reportedly have been reincarcerated at the same facility from which they’ve easily escaped in the past.

The Yemeni government also refuses to hand over the Yemeni-American imam who U.S. authorities now believe helped some of the Saudi hijackers prepare for their 9/11 “martyrdom” operations. The Muslim cleric, Anwar Aulaqi, is still at large in Yemen.

Kuwait: The nation we freed from the brutal grip of Saddam Hussein recently repaid our kindness by freeing a Gitmo terrorist we released into their custody. Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi turned around and blew up a police station in Iraq in a deadly suicide attack last month.

Saudi Arabia: The kingdom is expected to free all of the more than 100 Gitmo terrorists we’ve stupidly handed over into their custody. Many of them, like al-Qaida fighter Jumah al-Dossari, have been treated like VIPs, afforded monthly stipends, cars, jobs and resort-like housing replete with pools and volleyball courts.

The Saudi “reintegration program” for repatriated Gitmo terrorists conditions their release on an agreement not to attack targets within the kingdom.

It’s OK, however, for them to attack the West — or U.S. troops next door in Iraq. Indeed, some already have rejoined the jihad.

This is the level of cooperation we have to show for bringing the Saudis into the WTO and rubber-stamping an additional 20,000 U.S. visas for their students. Perhaps they’re holding out for the big prize: a $20 billion arms package Congress is reviewing.

Or, perhaps they need motivation of another kind.

Until we can certify that these so-called allies are genuinely cracking down on terrorists, they ought to pay a heavy price in the form of suspended aid, canceled arms sales and even reimposed sanctions.

Maybe then they’ll see we’re serious.