More than 100 Saudis have been repatriated to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo. The United States has trusted the Saudis to rehabilitate these former detainees and make sure they do not return to the battlefield. But the New York Times has now reported disturbing new evidence that the Saudi program is not going as planned.
Said Ali al-Shihri, a former detainee at Guantánamo, disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia after spending months in the Saudi rehabilitation program. He is now the deputy leader of al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch, which most recently executed the bombing on the American Embassy in Sana in September of 2008. That attack killed 10 civilians, as well as six terrorists, and al-Shihri may have played a direct role.
Al-Shihri’s case highlights three separate, but related, problems the new Obama administration will face in closing Guantánamo.
First, obviously, there is the concern that Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation program will not be effective. Moreover, Saudi Arabia lost track of al-Shihri once he decided to rejoin the fight, and there is a distinct possibility that dozens of other former Guantánamo detainees could slip through their grasp as well.
In fact, the Bush administration authorized the transfer of dozens of Saudis who are suspected of playing key roles in al Qaeda’s terror. It is not clear why the Bush administration let these suspects go. The Saudi regime has pressured the U.S. government to repatriate detained Saudis. And Guantánamo became deeply unpopular, creating pressure to find a home for detainees outside of U.S. custody. But, as al-Shihri’s return to jihad illustrates, the U.S. needs a comprehensive program for monitoring detainees–especially those thought to pose a substantial risk.
The new Obama administration should keep in mind that just because a detainee was freed by the Bush administration, it does not mean that he is an innocent.
Second, as the New York Times notes, more than one-third of the remaining detainees are Yemeni. Even though a comparable number of Yemenis and Saudis entered Guantánamo, far more Saudis have been released. This is because the Saudis promised to keep tabs on the former detainees, whereas the Yemeni government did not make similar assurances. But even if Yemen claims that it has come up with a program similar to the Saudi one, the Obama administration should be skeptical. As the government notes in its declassified files released from Guantánamo: “Yemen is not a nation supporting the Global War on Terrorism.”
Just recently, the Yemeni government released Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, from custody. Hamdan was repatriated from Guantánamo after a military commission determined that he deserved a lenient sentence. Other terrorists, such as some of those responsible for the USS Cole bombing, have “escaped” from Yemeni jails. And the Yemeni government has even cooperated with al Qaeda, and associated jihadist groups, when it comes to fighting their common tribal enemies inside Yemen.
So, the Obama administration should be wary of sending large numbers of Yemeni suspects back to their home country.
Third, the Obama administration should review the Guantánamo files not only to determine the threat level posed by each individual detainee who remains in custody, but also to learn from the intelligence that has been collected. The intelligence assembled from the Guantánamo detainees, although imperfect, is one of the U.S. government’s largest sources of human intelligence on al Qaeda and the Taliban. And that intelligence reveals a number of startling details.
For example, the government’s unclassified files on al-Shihri note that he was an “al Qaeda travel facilitator” who would brief “others in Mashhad, Iran on entry procedures into Afghanistan utilizing a certain crossing.” In fact, al-Shihri is “on a watch list for facilitating travel for Saudis willing to go to Afghanistan through Iran by providing fake passports to those unable to get one.”
Al Qaeda’s use of Mashhad as a transit point has long been known to the U.S. government. As Ken Timmerman first reported in the Washington Times, senior Bush administration officials were briefed on this fact as early as October of 2001. And, as the 9/11 Commission noted, most of the 9/11 hijackers transited Iranian soil en route to their day of terror.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD reviewed thousands of unclassified files released from Guantánamo. The Mashhad-based transit line al-Shihri helped run is not the only one al Qaeda operates inside Iran. More than fifty detainees who are either currently held or have been held at Guantánamo are alleged to have had some involvement with Iran. Some of them, like the Taliban’s former governor of the Herat province, were accused of illicit dealings with the Iranian government. The governor, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, even admitted to setting up at least two meetings between senior Iranian and Taliban officials. At these meetings, Iran and the Taliban, who were one-time enemies, agreed to work together to counter American influence in South and Central Asia.
Dozens of the detainees analyzed by THE WEEKLY STANDARD used al Qaeda’s transit nodes in the Iranian cities of Tayyebat, Zahedan, and Mashhad–all three cities are on Iran’s easternmost border with Afghanistan. Iran’s capital, Tehran, was also identified in the unclassified files as a common transit hub.
These transit hubs were operated by Saudi-based charities that, in reality, acted as fronts for al Qaeda and the Taliban. One of these charities is al Wafa, which has been designated under Executive Order 13224 as a terrorist organization and is briefly mentioned in 9/11 Commission’s report as an al Qaeda front.
Prior to his release, al-Shihri was accused of dealing with al Wafa. He had contacts with senior al Wafa officials and one of his aliases and his phone number were “found in the pocket litter of the Karachi, Pakistan manager of” al Wafa. Some of the Saudis the Bush administration agreed to repatriate to Saudi Arabia are alleged to have run al Wafa’s operations inside Iran and Afghanistan as well. One of them, Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi, is alleged to have worked with the Taliban and al Qaeda at the highest levels. At Guantánamo, al-Matrafi was accused of personally working with both Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.
So, in addition to monitoring former detainees and determining where current ones should be sent, the Obama administration has the additional challenge of processing the intelligence collected on our terrorist enemies.
The government’s files on terrorists such as Said Ali al-Shihri contain thousands of crucial pieces of intelligence.
The Obama administration would be wise to learn from them.
Thomas Joscelyn is the senior editor of the website Long War Journal.
