Source: NPR
If President-elect Obama closes Guantanamo, as he pledged to on the campaign trail, the administration will have to figure out what to do with the remaining detainees. Forty percent of Guantanamo prisoners are Yemeni, and diplomatic discussions between the United States and Yemen about what to do with detainees who do not pose a risk failed to produce an agreement. Christopher Boucek spoke with NPR’s Jackie Northam about the merits of a rehabilitation program modeled on a successful Saudi initiative.
Nearly 3,000 people have gone through Saudi Arabia’s four-year rehabilitation program, including former Guantanamo detainees. The program includes intensive counseling sessions, help finding employment, and, crucially, religious dialogue with imams who engage former militants in discussions of sharia and the Quran. Only two percent of program graduates relapse, but Boucek noted that the low re-arrest rate reflects the fact that the program focuses on low to mid-level operatives, not senior militants.