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. “A total of 218 prisoners, including those who have returned from Guantanamo, have benefited from the rehabilitation program,” the source said. Armed with highly-educated Muslim scholars to spread true teachings of Islam to the returnees from Guantanamo, the rehabilitation program is designed to counter and destroy the argument of the deviant ideology that has fueled the Muslim youth to go astray into extremism. The program has come with a mission to correct the course of those suspects and rehabilitate them to be constructive members of the society, the source said. Since the beginning of the rehabilitation program of terror suspects, only nine were arrested again, including Guantanamo returnees, after their release, and legal procedures against them will be completed, the source said. “Some of them have even voluntarily contributed to the activities of this program to help others return to normal life,” the source said. In addition to an awareness program to combat violent ideology several targeting the public, there is a rehabilitation program that targets prisoners in which their families take part to help them with an easier and faster social integration to be more of constructive society members, the source added. “The prisoners care program is not a detention program per se, rather it is an organized social rehabilitation to help provide assimilate the prisoners back into a normal life,” the source said. Upon completion of the requirements of the rehabilitation course, the prisoners are released back into society with full responsibility as good citizens, becoming subject to the Kingdom's laws like other citizens, the source said. In case of any law violation of any type, they will be followed and prosecuted, the source said. There are still bad apples of Saudi returnees from Guantanamo, but the Saudi society is completely united to fight them, source said. Their noticeable presence near the Saudi borders is yet another indication that there are terror masterminds who are still planning to continue with their terrorist activities against homeland security, the statement added. These current terror practices will only serve as a pretext to keep the detention center across the world open, reducing the chance the return of current detainees, the statement concluded.
