It's a good thing the Daily Telegraph website boasts streaming video, because this story must be seen to be believed: a new rehab centre for ex-jihadists in Saudi Arabia.
That's right, the same Saudi Arabia that gave us Wahhabist Qur'an translations, the religious police and hundreds miles of woman-free streets and motorways.
It's also the same Saudi Arabia that is the number one country of origin for foreign fighters in the Iraq insurgency.
However, the Saudi government has embarked on a novel pilot deprogramming scheme for captured Islamist militants - a programme reportedly eyed with interest by British authorities.
Prisoners spend the final days of their sentence in a halfway house learning to engage with society in non-aggressive fashion. From The Telegraph's video, this is achieved partly through crayon drawings.
Take a look:
Comments (1)
The broadcast was an abbreviated one to that which was shown on France 24 TV
What is not shown is that the ex jihadis were told that they could not declare a jihad and only the Saudi State could do that. Jihad previously ( Afghanistan perhaps?) was permitted because the Saudi State did not have diplomatic arrangements with those countries.
Posted by M24 | December 16, 2007 12:33 AM
Posted on December 16, 2007 00:33