RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — No one was house on the dusty brown campus of the reintegration heart for recovering Islamic extremists. The swimming pool was nonetheless. The lights had been on on the gallery of artwork remedy works, however there have been no guests. Not a slip of paper was misplaced on the psychological and social providers unit.
The beneficiaries of the Saudi authorities program, which helps prisoners re-enter society, had been on furlough for household visits for Eid al-Adha, the season of the Feast of the Sacrifice, leaving the place eerily empty, like a U.S. school campus on Christmas break.
Solely a portray within the gallery provided a glimpse of the non secular tolerance that could be a hallmark of this system: It was of a girl smelling a flower, her hair uncovered and flowing, towards the night time sky.
This system, with its campus in Riyadh, and one other in Jeddah, grew from a counterterrorism campaign that began in 2004 to re-educate residents who had made their approach house from jihadist coaching camps in Afghanistan and others influenced by them.
About 6,000 males have gone by means of some type of this system, amongst them 137 former detainees of the U.S. army jail at Guantánamo Bay, none of whom had been convicted of battle crimes.
The final Guantánamo detainee was despatched to this system in 2017, simply earlier than President Donald J. Trump dismantled the workplace that negotiated transfers.
Now the query is whether or not and the way the middle suits into President Biden’s efforts to shut the jail at Guantánamo, which opened greater than 20 years in the past to carry terrorism suspects seized across the globe within the aftermath of the Sept. 11 assaults.
Through the years, america has held about 780 males and boys at Guantánamo Bay, with about 660 there at its peak in 2003. Saudi residents had been of specific curiosity as a result of 15 of the 19 hijackers within the Sept. 11 assaults had been Saudis.
The Trump administration launched only one prisoner from Guantánamo, a confessed Qaeda operative who’s at present serving a jail sentence in Riyadh below an Obama-era plea settlement. The Biden administration repatriated one other Saudi citizen in Could, however below an settlement to ship him for psychiatric remedy for schizophrenia, not jihadi rehabilitation.
Greater than half of the detainees at present at Guantánamo have been cleared for launch however should look ahead to the Biden administration to discover a nation keen to take them in with safety preparations. Most are from Yemen, considered one of a number of international locations Congress considers too unstable to obtain males from Guantánamo.
Different detainees are in plea negotiations with discussions about whether or not convicts might serve their sentences in overseas custody.
The Obama administration had tried to close down the jail, and Saudi Arabia was one of many international locations that figured prominently within the resettlement plans. One other was Oman, which obtained 28 Yemeni males in a extremely secretive mission that discovered them wives and houses and jobs, as long as they didn’t inform their neighbors that that they had achieved time at Guantánamo, in response to former detainees.
None of these males who had been resettled had been ever tried for battle crimes.
The Obama administration despatched 20 prisoners to the United Arab Emirates, largely Yemenis but in addition a number of Afghans and a person from Russia. However the nation primarily jailed them after which abruptly repatriated all however the Russian, drawing human rights protests that the returnees risked persecution.
With that program deemed a failure, the Biden administration has been on the lookout for different choices for cleared captives, chief amongst them the Yemenis.
A latest go to to the dusty brown campus within the outskirts of Riyadh highlighted one chance.
This system was based by and named for Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a former inside minister who had shut ties to U.S. intelligence companies. When he was pressured out by the dominion’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, this system was renamed the Heart for Counseling and Care.
As described by managers, this system blends courses on nonviolent interpretations of Shariah legislation with bodily health, recreation and counseling aimed toward returning those that graduate to their households.
Or, as one workers member referred to as it, undoing “the brainwash that occurs” when a younger man is drawn to non secular extremism.
A library options really helpful studying about profitable Saudis, “the appropriate individuals, to be able to keep away from the improper position fashions, not the way in which that turns you into darkness or loss of life,” Wnyan Obied Alsubaiee, this system’s director, who holds the rank of a significant common, mentioned by means of an interpreter.
One ebook recounts the story of a Saudi man who studied in New York within the Seventies and rose to prominence in civic life again in his homeland, together with a task in a Saudi-American dialogue after the assaults of Sept. 11. One other is a biography of a former authorities minister, “Constructing the Petrochemical Business in Saudi Arabia.”
Normal Alsubaiee mentioned two former prisoners of Guantánamo within the Saudi jail system can be accepted into this system as soon as they accomplished their sentences. One is Ahmed Muhammed Haza al-Darbi, the confessed Qaeda terrorist launched by the Trump administration. The identification of the opposite will not be identified.
The director bristled at portrayals of the program as a five-star resort for extremists.
“This isn’t a prize,” he mentioned. “They aren’t prisoners anymore. They’ve to return to society. We wish them to really feel accepted, and that that is one other likelihood.”
Of the 137 males despatched to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo, some by means of Saudi jail, 116 rejoined society and have stayed out of bother, 12 had been recaptured, eight had been killed and one is “needed,” in response to a program truth sheet.
Not one of the males had been recognized by the Saudi authorities in the course of the go to. However a few of the lifeless are identified, notably those that had been despatched in the course of the George W. Bush administration after which fled to Yemen, the place they joined Al Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula.
In Riyadh, this system’s individuals reside in pods, particular person bedrooms organized round a courtyard with a mosque, kitchen and small open air range for making tea on cool desert nights.
As described by program directors, the Saudi individuals’ first visits house are brief however evolve into long-term stays with household — for instance, the two-week vacation furlough that just about emptied the middle in July.
The nation’s safety equipment is unseen however current. The director is a army official and safety workers and care suppliers costume identically within the traditional white gown and crimson checked head overlaying favored by authorities employees and businessmen. Within the fitness center, a information gestured to a digicam in a nook of the burden lifting space and defined that facial expressions there have been below surveillance.
However on this go to, Saudi transparency solely went to date. No one would say how most of the program’s 200 slots had been occupied, or when the latest particular person or longest resident arrived.
On the gallery, an artwork therapist, Awad Alyami, described his program as a chance for the lads to precise their emotions and for program sponsors to guage them.
One portray was an expressionist take of the crowds circling the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest website, however clockwise moderately than the ritualistic counterclockwise. Program workers members had been involved in regards to the depiction of the holy website, and had the artist meet with a cleric.
One part of the gallery showcases the work of former Guantánamo prisoners.
“A whole lot of bizarre stuff right here,” Dr. Alyami mentioned.
The part has no signal however stands out for its picture of a guard tower, razor wire and males in orange uniforms. Different program individuals’ artwork tended towards desert scenes and different Saudi themes.