Jihadist Rehab Program Linked To More Al-Qaida Attacks

Jihadi Rehab Tied To Terror


The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is pushing Attorney General Eric Holder to explore links between a Jihadist Rehabilitation Program in Saudi Arabia and Yemeni extremists linked to the failed Christmas Day terror plot.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Tuesday re-released a letter he sent last month to Holder demanding that the Department of Justice suspend a program that sends select Guantanamo detainees to Saudi Arabia to shed their extremist tendencies.

The program has not been successful, Sessions contends, and his letter alleges that 11 of Saudi Arabia’s 85 most-wanted terrorists are “graduates of the Saudi program.”

Sessions also asserts links between the rehabilitation program and Yemeni terrorism. The graduates of the program, according to Sessions, include Said Ali al Shihri, now the deputy leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish, Al Qaeda’s current theological leader on the Arabian Peninsula.

“The list of failed participants in the Saudi program reads like a “who’s who” of Al Qaeda terrorists on the Arabian peninsula,” Sessions wrote in the Dec. 9 letter.

“As the terror plot against Northwest Flight 253 makes painfully clear, sending GITMO detainees to the Saudi ‘rehabilitation’ program puts the lives of American citizens in needless jeopardy,” Sessions spokesman Stephen Miller said in a news release.

The botched Christmas Day terrorist attack is quickly taking over the January congressional agenda. About a half-dozen committees are girding for inquests into the attack, a handful of which will include public hearings.

The re-release of Sessions’s letter nearly a month after he sent it to Holder shows that Republicans are trying to be more aggressive in questioning the Obama administration's response to the terrorist plot. Programs such as the rehabilitation program, which Holder has supported in the past, could come under increased scrutiny in the congressional hearings.

Holder has not yet responded to the Dec. 9 letter urging the suspension of the program.



Sources: Politico, PBS, Youtube