At least 180 former Guantanamo Bay prisoners, after their release, have taken up arms and joined jihadi groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
A Fox News report found that of these former Gitmo inmates, at least 20 to 30 have joined the ranks of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The report based on a tip-off from the US intelligence and defense officials found that the one involved with the jihadi activities are among the lot that were released from Guantanamo Bay in the last three years.
While many instead of taking up arms and joining the jihad, are now also involved in providing outside help.
The report also found that several former Gitmo detainees also have been involved in financing, recruitment and propaganda campaigns for ISIS from locations in Europe, and United States.
In total, 620 prisoners have been released from Guantanamo Bay. Besides joining with ISIS, a few other jihadi elements reportedly have joined with Al Qaeda and other smaller jihadi factions.
The report comes at a time when US claimed that it is making sincere efforts for the closure of Gitmo.
"We know that some of the detainees that have come out of Guantanamo have gone back to the fight, the battlefield. We're aware of that and we think that overall the policy of getting to close Guantanamo is clearly in the interest of the United States, as the president has articulated," defense secretary Chuck Hagel said.
The report, however, not only complicates the efforts to shut down Guantanamo Bay, and similar prisons operated by US outside the country, but also poses a serious question, on how America now plans to handle the ISIS.
The US authorities have already faced a lot of flak over the revelation that the man behind ISIS -the leader of the most brutal group that now controls swathes of land in Syria and Iraq -- was its prisoners in 2009.
Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who is now being dubbed as the new Osama bin Laden, was also an inmate of a US prison camp.
Reports claim that Baghdadi was released from Camp Bucca in 2009, and while walking out he threatened his American jailers saying, "I'll see you in New York."
US Army Colonel Kenneth King, the former commander of Camp Bucca in an interview told Daily Beast that he knew Baghdadi at the camp. "I'm not surprised that it was someone who spent time in Bucca but I'm a little surprised it was him," King said.
"He was a bad dude, but he wasn't the worst of the worst," King had said.
