RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA — Juma al-Dossari is returning to his life the way a photograph in a darkroom gradually takes shape on paper.
He is home after surviving six years and more than a dozen suicide attempts as a U.S. prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Courtyard walls have replaced barbed-wire fences, and Al-Dossari has completed what the Saudi government describes as a "soft approach" rehabilitation program to cleanse his mind, find him a wife, buy him a car and keep him happy so he doesn't drift back toward Islamic fanaticism and jihad.
It is a strange, erratic journey toward self-discovery; Al-Dossari says he can Google his name and find descriptions of a man he no longer knows, but he's still unsure about what kind of man he will become.
"We can't go immediately from getting off a plane from Cuba to living in society. Everything has changed," said Al-Dossari, a nervous, wiry 34-year-old in a checkered kaffiyeh. "There are more streets, bridges and buildings here than I remember. I was gone a long time. My driver's license expired while I was in Guantanamo. My father died. Now, I'm trying to get things back on track."
The other day, Al-Dossari sat on a long couch at the Care Rehabilitation Center with fellow released Guantanamo detainees. They wore pressed white tunics. Some spoke in broken English learned from their former captors; others were thin and still recovering from what Saudi doctors described as torture and trauma. Several of the men smiled as if posing for a family portrait, disguising the rage and bewilderment of lost years and wondering how to fit back into their native land, which was welcoming but suspicious.
This religiously rigid kingdom, a key U.S. ally that has been battling Islamic terrorist networks for years, is known for harsh imprisonment and interrogation tactics that often draw condemnation from human rights groups.
But for three years, the Interior Ministry has been trying to turn impressionable militants away from radicalism through six weeks of psychological counseling, religious reeducation, job training and art therapy that can produce Jackson Pollock knock-offs and stark desert scenes. Those who complete the program, such as Al-Dossari, receive outreach counseling and are kept under surveillance.
"We have to deal with the minds and the emotional passions of the extremists," said Turki Otayan, a psychologist at the center, which has treated 1,500 alleged militants, including more than 100 released this year from Guantanamo. "Fixing minds is like fixing a building with 60 floors. It's not easy."
Psychologists, sheiks and Interior Ministry officials occasionally allow reporters to visit the center and talk to detainees. There is an aura of public relations to the trip, but also a sense of mission to quell extremism in a country that produced Osama bin Laden and most of the Sept. 11 hijackers. With its strict tribal codes and devotion to Wahhabi Islam, Saudi Arabia understands the motivations and warped passions of young men willing to ignite holy war across the globe, and increasingly, within the kingdom.
Most of the men in the program were arrested in Saudi Arabia or in neighboring countries while attempting to travel to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, terrorist attacks across the kingdom, some aimed at Western targets, have killed nearly 150 people. A recent nationwide raid captured 208 alleged militants, some of whom were planning attacks on oil installations. Saudi media reported that police also discovered eight Chinese-made missiles that purportedly were to be fired at hotels and other buildings.
'Building trust'
The new rehabilitation program is aimed at militants who haven't entirely crossed over to nihilism. The program is calculated to change the image of Saudi Arabia as an exporter of terrorists while restoring dignity and confidence to misguided young Islamists who can then help lead others away from radical websites and bloody international ventures.
"We start building trust between us and them," Gen. Yousef Mansour, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said while sitting near a former militant who had been burned and disfigured in an Iraqi bombing. "There's no need for handcuffs. These guys are broken inside."
The center, a grid of low-lying buildings on the wind-swept outskirts of Riyadh, the capital, does not resemble a prison, except for an occasional glint of razor wire coiling above rose bushes and small soccer fields. Metal courtyard doors open to bearded faces, some smiling, some bemused. Some of the men make ink drawings, others dab paint and pastels to sketch a ship or a map of their country.
There is pingpong, lunch on the grass and Islamic lectures by Sheik Ahmed Jelan, a heavyset, jovial man who strolls the grounds in brown robes trimmed in gold.
