ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Guantanamo detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds about 250 prisoners, down from 780. President Obama plans to close the operation.The Pentagon never instituted an anti-extremism rehabilitation program for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, even as it released hundreds of detainees to their home countries and saw scores go back to practicing terrorism.
The lack of a deradicalization program takes on added importance this year as the Obama administration prepares to shut down the Guantanamo prison and send more combatants to other countries for adjudication.
Guantanamo's lack of an anti-extremism program stands in contrast to prisons in Iraq, where a commander instituted programs that swayed insurgents away from an extremist view of Islam.
"We don't have a rehabilitation program down there," said Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, the Pentagon spokesman regarding Guantanamo. "It was constructed to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield." The complex of camps in Cuba was expanded after the Sept. 11 attacks to house terror suspects, most of whom were captured in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. At its peak, the prison held 780 detainees.
At least 61 ex-Guantanamo inmates have returned to terrorism, according to the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). That number may not reflect all ex-detainees who have reverted. For example, a former detainee who recently appeared on an extremist Web site as an al Qaeda leader had not been listed among the 61.
• See related story:Freed Gitmo detainee claims torture
The utility of rehabilitation programs run by other countries is questionable.
Saudi Arabia, the home country of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, announced recently that 11 ex-Guantanamo detainees who went through a Saudi rehabilitation program are on the government's most-wanted list for terrorism.
Last month, U.S. counterterrorism officials disclosed that Said Ali al-Shihri, who was released from Guantanamo in late 2007, had resurfaced as the deputy leader of al Qaeda operations in Yemen.
However, the U.S. had more success with a program it ran at the Iraqi prison in Abu Ghraib.
By Kara Rowland - The Washington Times
Obama was excoriated for continuing the Bush administration's strictest national security policies, including indefinite detention, military commissions and a "targeted kill" program that authorizes the government to take out suspected terrorists anywhere. Published 8:56 p.m. July 29, 2010
By Sean Lengell - The Washington Times
The House ethics committee officially lodged charges against Rep. Charles B. Rangel, including that he used his office to raise $8 million for a college public policy center named after him and didn't file taxes while he was Congress' chief tax writer. Published 8:56 p.m. July 29, 2010
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