DAR AL ISLAM - SAUDI ARABIA: RE-EDUCATION OF A JIHADIST

Giving up jihad for an easy life in the Kingdom
By Roula Khalaf

Abu Suleiman seems like an ordinary young man. A 33-year-old Saudi with a small face and a thin beard, he works for an equity research company in Riyadh.

But he has a secret: for the past year the Saudi authorities have been paying his family $800 a month while they work on re-educating him not to be a jihadi.

This former inmate of Guantánamo Bay is the product of a rehabilitation programme, being watched with interest in Britain and the US, which has already seen 700 one-time jihadis released from Saudi jails and returned to society.

As part of the programme he was given an $18,000 present and car by the government on his wedding day. It was a striking turnround for a man who spent four years at Guantánamo after being captured fighting in Afghanistan's Tora Bora region.

The young jihadi, who claims to have met Osama bin Laden several times, was one of 65 Guantánamo prisoners transferred to Saudi Arabia.

By the time he arrived in Riyadh, he was disillusioned with jihad. Chosen for the Saudi experiment in counter-terrorism started in 2004, Abu Suleiman - not his real name - is presented as one of the programme's successful graduates.

The de-radicalisation programme uses a mix of heavy religious and psychological education on the "good belief in Islam" to rehabilitate militants.

Chosen candidates are plucked from the Saudi prison system, where they enjoy few rights and are sometimes tortured. They are subjected to six to 10 weeks of de-brainwashing in a programme involving 100 official clerics and 30 professionals, including psychologists.

Their families are paid a monthly stipend of up to $1,500 to forestall any al-Qaeda networks from paying relatives to keep them on side. Prisoners deemed worthy of graduation are then sometimes assisted in finding jobs and even wives.

"They settle down when they marry," says Abdulrahman al-Hadlaq, chairman of the rehabilitation committee.

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1) Giving up jihad for an easy life in the Kingdom