Today’s NYT has the most entertaining obit I’ve read in a while, for the late Jonathan Idema.
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 Army’s 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.
Idema was sentenced to ten years in an Afghan prison for allegedly imprisoning and torturing eight men.
…Mr. Idema was pardoned by President Hamid Karzai after 3. He said he did not know Mr. Karzai’s reasons, nor why he had been given an apartment-style cell in prison with satellite television, Persian carpets and specially prepared meals.
And perhaps my favorite part:
He had a temper. He once fired a shot within six inches of the head of a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He threatened to punch the broadcast journalist Geraldo Rivera.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2012 at 10:26 am and is filed under Clippings, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Sure, all of us have wanted to kill a DSM reporter from time to time. But the fact that we refrained is what separates us from the animals…