Pentagon: Gitmo prisoner releases not fail safe

[unhappycamper]

Pentagon: Gitmo prisoner releases not fail safe
By Andrew O. Selsky - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Jan 27, 2009 5:59:04 EST

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The re-emergence of two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners as al-Qaida terrorists in the past week won’t likely change U.S. policy on transfers to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said Monday.

More than 100 Saudis have been repatriated from the U.S. military’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia, where the government puts them through a rehabilitation program designed to encourage them to abandon Islamic extremism and reintegrate into civilian life.

The online boasts by two of these men that they have joined al-Qaida in Yemen underscore that the Saudi system isn’t fail safe, the Pentagon said. A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington confirmed the men had been Guantanamo detainees. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose that fact on the record.

Another two or three Saudis who had been transferred from Guantanamo cannot be located by the Saudi government, said Christopher Boucek, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. sees the Saudi program as admirable.


Rest of article at: http://armytimes.com/news/2009/01/ap_gitmo_prisoners_release_012709/%2e