At least one these suspects, Said al-Shihri — now reportedly serving as deputy chief of Al Qaeda in Yemen — was at the Saudi rehabilitation center when journalist Nancy Durham visited in 2007 and produced From Jihad to Rehab, featured in WIDE ANGLE’s Focal Point series.

Durham reached Dr. Awad Alyami, the art therapist who appears in the video, by phone after hearing about al-Shihri’s return to militancy. Al-Shihri was “not the ideal student,” Alyami said, “not really interested in doing anything with any of us.” But Alyami does not take this example to mean that the Saudi program doesn’t work. “Many students have learned how to see things in a positive way and created balance in their lives through art,” he said.

Until now, the Saudi rehabilitation program has been widely viewed as a model, particularly for Yemen, home to nearly half of the remaining Guantanamo detainees. As Yemen prepares to receive these inmates upon the closing of Guantanamo announced by President Barack Obama, any doubts about the efficacy of the Saudi program could complicate the handover.

Here’s From Jihad to Rehab:

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the attacks of September 11, 2001 were from Saudi Arabia. In the aftermath of the attacks, the Saudi government aggressively pursued domestic terrorists, dismantling Al Qaeda cells and rounding up thousands of people for questioning. But after the bombings on its own soil in Riyadh in 2003, the Saudi government adopted a softer approach to counterterrorism – therapy. This new method aims to counter the fanatical ideology of detainees. Islamic religious scholars and leaders challenge the detainee’s violent interpretation of the Koran and highlight peaceful and charitable aspects of Islam. Egypt, Singapore, Indonesia, and the United States in Iraq are among the countries implementing similar programs.

ABOUT THE FILM

In From Jihad to Rehab, Canadian journalist Nancy Durham takes us inside a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia, where art therapy and religious re-education are being used to reform militant jihadists, like Ahmed al-Shaya, who went to Iraq on a suicide mission in 2004 where he killed 12 people but survived himself. We meet Juma Al-Dossary who has just returned to Saudi Arabia after spending six years in Guantanamo, and speak with Dr. Awad Alymai, the detainees’ art therapist, about his patients’ transformation.

FOCAL POINT spoke to Dr. Horgan about the Saudi program for the rehabilitation of former jihadists, and the common experiences of former terrorists from around the globe.

Click on the audio file below to hear the interview.

Photo courtesy of The International Center for the Study of Terrorism, The Pennsylvania State University.