This is the end for Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema. The vigilante adventurer and terrorist hunter once jailed in Afghanistan for running a private prison and torture shop has reportedly died in Mexico.
According to local press reports first spotted by Robert Young Pelton, an emergency call placed Saturday led to the discovery of Idema’s body at his home in Bacalar, a small town in southeastern Mexico where Idema was reported to have operated a tour boat business. Bacalar’s police chief reportedly said Idema was suffering from AIDS.
The State Department has not confirmed Idema’s death, but Penny Alise, Idema’s ex-partner, tells Danger Room: “Yes, he’s dead.”
Idema has popped up in the Mexican media before. More than two years ago, Idema had holed up in the town, wanted for questioning regarding allegations he raped and forcibly detained his then-partner over several days. He then later apparently skipped a court summons and (temporarily) fled across the nearby border to Belize.
It started just two months after 9/11, when Idema appeared in Afghanistan under the guise of a “humanitarian relief” worker. Previously a paintball entrepreneur who spent three years in federal prison for defrauding 60 companies out of $200,000, Idema claimed to be a former special forces operative with links to the top echelons of the U.S. military. Neither are really true: He was linked to Special Forces but in supply and logistics, not as the “Rambo” commando he portrayed himself to be. The U.S. military likewise avoided him.
In reality — or his reality — he was a terrorist hunter, or at least self-identified as such. He formed a group called “Task Force Saber 7″ with a crew of Afghans and another former U.S. Army soldier. Tagging along was video journalist Edward Caraballo.
He was known to “regularly turn up at the Intercontinental Hotel, where most of the foreign journalists were staying, attempting to sell videos and photographs purporting to show Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists training for assassinations and rehearsing gas attacks using dogs,” according to The Independent newspaper.
Some of these videos he managed to sell for large amounts of money. But his motivation went beyond personal wealth. A former Army sergeant who knew Idema told New York magazine that Idema wanted “to kill every fucking Afghan I see.”
Idema’s terrorist-hunting days finally came to an end nearly three years later. Afghan police raided his Kabul headquarters, a shootout ensued, and Idema and his team were taken into custody. Inside his base — or private dungeon — were bloodied clothing strewn on the floor, five prisoners tied to chairs, and three beaten-up prisoners hanging blindfolded and upside-down from the ceiling. Idema claimed the prison was operating under the auspices of the U.S. military. It wasn’t.
Idema was convicted and given a 10-year prison sentence, but was pardoned in 2007 by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. He left Afghanistan that June.
The next month he met his partner, Penny Alise, in Cancun. “I was in love & stupid. Period,” she wrote in a blog post last week. “And because of love & stupidity, my life will never be the same, whatever is left of it.” Alise said Idema had frequent and promiscuous sexual partners, and believes he intentionally infected her and others with HIV.
“Yet I feel like a block has been taken off my shoulders finally, because now everyone knows I was always telling the truth,” she tells Danger Room. Asked to describe him, Alise said: “A true sociopath. A charmer who was omnipotent and the epitome of evil.”
He’s also left a bit of a legacy. Idema didn’t live in a vacuum, but predated a series of lone wolf idiots: adventurers, bounty hunters and even unhinged swashbucklers. But then again, when U.S. offers multi-million dollar rewards for the heads of terrorist leaders, they’re sorta attracting them.
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