Jihadists go to rehab at ‘5-star’ Saudi centre

RIYADH: With its indoor swimming pool, sun- splashed patios and liveried staff, the Saudi complex has the trappings of a fivestar resort, but it is actually a rehab centre – for violent jihadists.

Riyadh’s Mohammed Nayef Counselling and Care Centre, a cushy halfway house between prison and freedom, spotlights a controversial Saudi strategy for tackling homegrown extremists.

While the global fight against terrorism is often associated with drone strikes and torture, the philosophy that underpins the centre’s approach is that extremism requires not coercion but an ideological cure.

Overseen by clerics and psychologists, it works to prevent convicts who have served their sentences from returning to jihad, through what it calls religious counselling and ideological detoxification.

“Our focus is on correcting their thoughts, their misconceptions, their deviation from Islam,” Yahya Abu Maghayed, a director at the centre, said while giving AFP a golf cart tour of the sprawling, palm tree-lined complex.

The convicts are housed in a series of low- slung buildings, outfitted with large- screen televisions and king-size beds, all framed by manicured lawns.

Many linked to groups such as al- Qaeda and the Taliban walk around freely in flowing white robes, and have access to a spacious gym, a banquet hall and furnished apartments reserved for visits from spouses.

“We make the ‘beneficiaries’ feel they are normal people and still have a chance – a chance to return to society,” Abu Maghayed said, insisting the centre refrained from calling them prisoners or inmates.

Saudi Arabia, long accused of exporting its ultraconservative Wahhabist Sunni doctrine around the world, is itself a victim of domestic terror attacks.

Crown Prince Mohammed Salman, who has sought to roll back the influence of the ultra- conservative religious establishment, this week jumpstarteda41-nationmilitary coalition to combat Islamist extremism, vowing to wipe terrorism from the face of the Earth.

But the rehab facility, founded in 2004, is one of the centrepieces of Saudi Arabia’s strategy to expunge violent extremism at home. It claims to have treated more than 3,300 men convicted of terrorismrelated crimes, including repatriated Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The centre boasts of a “success rate of 86 per cent”, Abu Maghayed said, measured by those men who did not return to jihad for at least a decade after graduating from the centre.

Of the remainder, he said, most only showed signs of ‘ deviant behaviour’ and only a minuscule number relapsed into violent jihad.

An American terrorism expert who has closely studied the Saudi programme said the recidivism rate was higher, pointing out media reports of graduates from the centre who have showed up on battlefronts.

“Saudis are to be applauded for trying something different – they were one of the first to try a ‘talking cure’ for terrorists,” John Horgan, another expert at Georgia State University, told AFP.

“( But) without greater transparency about its participants it’s impossible to know what value added, if any, this programme brings in reducing the threat of re- engagement in terrorism.”

AFP was given a chance to interview ‘ beneficiaries’ if they agreed, but when two bearded, gym-buffed men were approached in their living quarters, they declined to talk.

Critics say there is a moral hazard of treating jihadists, many with blood on their hands, with lavish facilities and financial incentives. — AFP