THE TELEGRAPH: Saudi Arabia says it will not give up a controversial rehabilitation programme for Islamist radicals heavily criticised in the US after former inmates set up an al-Qaeda cell in neighbouring Yemen.
One former Guantanamo Bay inmate who went through the programme, which features "positive thinking" classes, art therapy and video games, is now deputy leader of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, the cell behind the Christmas Day "underwear bombing" in an airliner over Detroit.
Four others from the same group of Guantanamo inmates handed over to the Saudis in November 2007 are among more than a dozen inmates who have returned to terrorism, including one who was shot dead while wearing a suicide vest under a burka last year.
But senior officials including an Interior Ministry general and the cleric and psychologists responsible for overseeing the programme's "religious re-indoctrination" courses told The Daily Telegraph it had been an overall success.
"We are confident in our system," said General Mansur al-Turki. "Part of that is the rehabilitation programme, and when we say that we are considering one thing - the results we are getting. We are not giving up because a few people decided to go back and share al-Qaeda activities." >>> Richard Spencer in Riyadh | Tuesday, February 09, 2010
