Recent reports note that one, and possibly two Saudis who have gone into the government’s rehabilitation program for those involved in terrorist activity have shown up in a videotape from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi government believes the program is still working, though, and worth keeping. This Saudi Gazette article states that 214 men have gone through the program and nine have returned to terrorism, two of whom had been at Guantanamo. (Arab News reports that 218 have gone through the program.) That’s an overall recidivism rate of 4%, far below what Western prisons report. The article goes on to stress that this program is not a detention program, but one intended to rehabilitate, helping its participants to understand where they went wrong and how to avoid falling into the same behavior patterns that trapped them in the first place. Unfortunately, many of the Saudi-bashers see images of program participants in an art class and conclude that the Saudi government is not serious in its efforts. That’s a pity because it again poisons the well by refusing to acknowledge success when it happens.

Official: Rehab program of returnees still successful

RIYADH – The recent reappearance of a rehabilitated Al-Qaeda member in Yemen who had been previously held at Guantanamo Bay does not disqualify the Saudi rehabilitation program as it has been proven successful to integrate the majority of returnees into the mainstream of society, an official source at the Ministry of Interior said Sunday.

The Saudi government has adopted a well-designed rehabilitation program of security and advisory strategies to fight the deviant ideology, the source said.
Saeed Al-Shihri, who came back to the Kingdom a year ago after spending six years at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay and then appeared in Yemen to join the terror group’s Yemen branch, went through the Kingdom’s rehabilitation program.
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In a related piece, Saudi Gazette also reports that the father of Saeed Al-Shihri—one of those seen on a recent videotape from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—has condemned his son’s return to terrorism:

Shihri’s father damns him for returning to Al-Qaeda
Abdullah Al-Oraifij

RIYADH – The father of ex-Gitmo detainee Sa’eed Al-Shihri who has seemingly surfaced in Yemen as a senior Al-Qaeda operative despite having had undergone a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia, says his son “is a deviant member of society who must be removed.”

The father, Jaber Aal Khath’am Al-Shihri, made the pronouncement in an interview with Saudi Gazette/Okaz during which he detailed how his son had seemed alright and was blending into society until four men started to visit him regularly.

A senior official of the Ministry of Interior, meanwhile, said a video posted on a jihadist website claiming the alleged reappearance of Al-Shihri and another Saudi, ex-Gitmo prisoner Abu Al-Hareth Muhammad Al-Oufi, as senior members of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, cannot diminish the Saudi government’s internationally acknowledged success in rehabilitating former terrorist suspects.

The source noted that only two out of 109 prisoners freed from the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have allegedly returned to the terrorist fold.

Thirteen other Saudis still remain in the Guantanamo Bay facility, which President Barack Obama, soon after he took office last week, has ordered to be closed.
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