A Brief History Of Jihadi Rehab Programs

Mohammed Jawad, one of the youngest detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is photographed at a family home in Kabul August 25, 2009, the morning after he returned to Afghanistan. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

Imams, Saunas, And Art Therapy: A Brief History Of Jihadi Rehab Programs -- Olga Khazan, The Atlantic

Could reform school be the next step for Guantanamo Bay prisoners?

Deep in Pakistan's Swat Valley, a 24-year-old man named Farooq was busy making a wooden lute called a rubab in a classroom last month. But Farooq isn't a woodworker -- he's a former Taliban fighter who was sent to the school by the Pakistani army with the goal of reforming him. With enough vocational and religious re-education, they hope, he won't be tempted to join up with extremist groups after his release.

"The Taliban had misguided me," he told NPR. "They told me I had to wage jihad against the Pakistani army. But now I understand that they used me. The army and this school helped me understand that."

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My Comment: Call me skeptical .... but I have deep reservations that most of these detainees will embrace such a rehab program.

Saudi Arabia's "Rehab" For Terrorists Is Not Working

Saudi former al-Qaeda Islamists play volleyball at a rehabilitation center for militants in Riyadh.
Photo AFP

One In Five Guantanamo Detainees Rejects Rehab -- The National

RIYADH // Extremists who spent time at Guantanamo are twice as likely to relapse than others attending Saudi Arabia’s much-praised rehabilitation programme, a senior interior ministry official said yesterday.

Extremists had an overall relapse rate of about 9.5 per cent, but that number soars to around 20 per cent for those who joined the programme from Guantanamo.

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Update #1: 25 Saudi Guantanamo prisoners return to militancy -- Reuters
Update #2: 20 percent failure rate in Saudi Gitmo rehab programme -- AFP

My Comment: The Saudi explanation for this failure .... it is all the Americans fault ....

He also blamed the treatment they received at the US military-run detention camp in Cuba.

Yup .... those evil American infidels and their policy of torture .... while the Saudi Kingdom would never contemplate doing such things.

What a difference a year makes .... last year the Obama administration was hailing this "rehab" program.

A Look At Saudi Arabia's Terror Rehabilitation Program For Former Jihadists

Former Gitmo detainee Ahmed Zaid Salem Zuhair, in a Saudi terror rehabilitation camp, will soon be released. Judith Miller

EXCLUSIVE: Former Gitmo Prisoner, Rehabilitated in Saudi Arabia, May Soon be Released -- FOX News

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — To American officers at Guantanamo Bay, Ahmed Zaid Salem Zuhair was inmate No. 669 — a hardcore, veteran Muslim terrorist suspected of having killed an American in Bosnia. But here in Saudi Arabia, he is a "beneficiary," a former religious deviant who, having learned the true meaning of Islam, has been rehabilitated.

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My Comment: My hope is on his 10 kids and three wives reigning him in so that he does not decide to run off and do jihad .... and not the Saudi Government.