U.S. Detainees Terrorizing After Saudi Rehab

A Saudi Arabian “rehabilitation” program that supposedly reforms Guantanamo Bay jihadists has instead served as a training camp for future terrorists yet the Obama Administration ardently supports it and continues sending detainees its way. 

Earlier this year the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency revealed a sharp rise in the number of Guantanamo detainees who rejoin terrorist missions after leaving the military prison. Many of those who returned to “the fight” after being released from custody graduated from the Saudi rehab program for jihadists, according to counterterrorism officials. 

Among them is a deputy Al Qaeda leader (Said Ali al-Shihri) in Yemen who organized a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in that country’s capital last year. The renowned Al Qaeda boss was also involved in car bombings outside the American Embassy that killed at least 16 people. 

This week the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Alabama’s Jeff Sessions) reveals that there are many more like al-Shihri and that the list of failed participants in the Saudi program reads like a “who’s who” of Al Qaeda terrorists on the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, eleven Guantanamo detainees who graduated from the Saudi rehab appear on a list of most wanted terrorists published by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry. 

Sessions disclosed the alarming information in a letter asking Attorney General Eric Holder to suspend all transfers to the failed Saudi project until the cause of the failures is determined and the program’s security is verified. “In view of the many active terrorists who have emerged from the Saudi program, I do not believe it has been successful in rehabilitating detainees,“ Sessions writes, adding that it should no longer be relied on to free prisoners from the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba. 

Sessions made the request because his crucial Senate committee has oversight over the Justice Department, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and jurisdiction over national issues involving terrorism. He points out that as head of the administration’s Guantanamo Task Force Holder has repeatedly vouched for the Saudi rehab program despite reoccurring evidence of its numerous failures.