Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the Obama administration suspend the policy of shipping some GITMO detainees to Saudi Arabia for so-called jihadi rehab.
It’s about time someone in our government speaks out against rehab for terrorists. Sen. Sessions makes some good points about the Saudi program in particular:
“The list of failed participants in the Saudi program reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Al Qaeda terrorists on the Arabian Peninsula,” Sessions wrote.
Sessions listed among the terrorists who have either graduated or escaped from the program to resume terrorist activities: Said Ali al Shiri, the deputy leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen; Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish, Al Qaeda’s theological leader in the Arabian Peninsula; Abu Hareth Muhammed al-Awfi and Yousef Mohammed al Shihri, who was shot in October trying to pass through a Saudi security checkpoint wearing an explosives belt under women’s clothing.
Sessions’ office notes that about 120 detainees, many of neighboring Yemeni descent, have been sent to Saudi Arabia. Of that number, 108 have reportedly “graduated” and about 20 percent of that number have disappeared. The rest appear to be complying with the rules of rehabilitation.
This rehab programs are a joke. I emailed Michael Scheuer–the former head of the Bin Laden Unit at the CIA and friend of The Conservative Beacon–to get his take on these jihadi rehab programs. Here’s an excerpt from his email to me:
My own view is that all of these rehab programs are largely hoaxes. The Arabs — especially UAE, Kuwait, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia — know us far better than we know them. They know that Americans and Westerners love to think man is “perfectible” and can be re-habed from any previous activity no matter how heinous, perverted, or — in this case — religiously motivated. What these rehab programs are likely to do is to persuade the terrorist not to attack inside one of the four countries mentioned above — by force, bribery, threats to family, etc. — and then fund the jailed jihadi’s onward travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, or another jihad of his choice. hoping that he kills some Westerners and gets killed in the process so he won’t come home. This is what they did successfully during the Afghans’ war against the Soviets, only then they could do it openly and did not have to first put them through rehab to fool the Congress and our oh-so-smart governing elite and the media.
He’s right.
I hope that Senator Sessions, and every other Republican for that matter, will eventually call not only for the suspension of the program, but it’s complete abolition. We should not be participating–in any way–in such farces.
