About 200 University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor community members gathered in the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Auditorium at the Ford School of Public Policy Wednesday evening to hear a discussion between Public Policy professor Javed Ali and Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent. The pair discussed Tapper’s newly released nonfiction novel “Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War.”
The novel focuses on the apprehension and trial of convicted al-Qaida operative Ibrahim Harun, commonly known as Spin Ghul. Harun took part in an attack on a U.S. military patrol in Afghanistan in 2003 that killed two American servicemembers and conspired to bomb the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. Tapper said Harun’s arrest and transport to the U.S. began following anti-government uprisings in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring.
When the uprisings reached Libya, Italian ships arrived to transport refugees from the country to refugee camps on the Italian mainland. Tapper said Harun was on one of those boats when he approached an Italian police officer, showed several bullet wounds and introduced himself as a member of al-Qaida who killed two American soldiers, Jerod Dennis and Raymond Losano…