Jonathan Idema, 1956–2012

Jonathan Idema was such an egotistical fantasist that when he watched the 1997 movie The Peacemaker, he saw himself as the obvious inspiration for George Clooney’s role as a dashing Special Forces soldier. Idema quickly filed suit against Steven Spielberg, the movie’s producer, demanding a share of the proceeds. Like most of his claims, the suit was found without merit, and Idema was forced to pay $267,079 in legal fees.

Idema’s “eventful life” began in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said The New York Times. He enlisted in the Army at 18 and served with the Green Berets until 1978. He then set up a paintball business in Fayetteville, N.C., while moonlighting as an international security consultant. Idema claimed in a 1995 interview with 60 Minutes that he’d discovered a “black market in backpack-size nuclear weapons” in Lithuania, but refused to provide any proof to the FBI. Idema accumulated dozens of reckless-driving, firearms, and assault charges in North Carolina over the years. In 1994 he was convicted on 58 counts of fraud and jailed for four years.

It was in Afghanistan that Idema found true infamy, said the London Independent. Soon after arriving there in 2001 to make a documentary, he recast himself as the mercenary “Tora Bora Jack.” After “a few Heinekens” in the cocktail bars of Kabul, he would claim to be the leader of an anti-terrorist cell named “Task Force Saber 7.” But the “brutal truth” was that he and several other U.S. civilians were torturing Afghans they suspected of terrorism in a private jail. He was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years in prison in Kabul.

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned Idema in 2007, said the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer, and he resurfaced in Mexico as a “tour boat operator known as ‘Captain Black Jack.’” Dressed in Arab robes, he would go on “round-the-clock vodka- and cocaine-fueled binges,” while claiming he possessed “superblood” that would cure the AIDS virus ravaging his body. In the end, few mourned his passing. Ex-girlfriend Penny Alesi called Idema “a charmer who was omnipotent and the epitome of evil.”