Manama: Saudi national Mohammad Mardhi Eisa Al Zahrani, a recently released Guantanamo Bay prisoner, has arrived in his home country and is to undergo a strict rehabilitation and counseling programme.
“We have prepared all the facilities for him and his family to meet,” Mansoor Al Turki, the spokesperson for the interior ministry, said. “He will undergo the Saudi rehabilitation and counseling programme. With Al Zahrani’s repatriation, nine Saudi nationals remain in Guantanamo. We are on contact with the concerned authorities to bring them home,” he said, quoted by local daily Al Eqtisadiya on Sunday.
Saudi Arabia has launched a special programme for returnees from Guantanamo to help them with the rehabilitation and reintegration process. It includes proper counseling to help overcome the exhausting emotional experience and ease reintegration in society, as well as therapy, dialogue, discussion and interaction.
The programmes are seen as part of the country’s security drive to defeat terrorism and undermine support for extremist ideologies and fanatical activism.
The programme has been hailed as a better alternative than prison incarceration in demobilizing support for extremism and reintegrating former prisoners.
Al Zahrani, 45, was held at Guantanamo from August 2002 until November 2014. He was approved for release from the infamous prison last month by the special review board, created by US President Barack Obama in his efforts to shut the prison..
Until the latest review, he was seen as presenting a “high risk” to American interests, but the review board on October 3 decided that he was no longer a threat to the United States.
