He added, "If you don't follow the four conditions, you go to hell, not heaven."
The message -- Bin Laden is castigated with fervor here -- was part of the rehabilitation center's pervading mantra: The militants were led astray by corrupted ideals, and only state- approved imams and sheiks can interpret the true meanings of the Koran. It is the same theme the government has been spreading to villages and rural outposts in hopes of undercutting the allure radical Islam has for young men with limited opportunities.
"Bin Laden doesn't have the proper religious education to control so many people," said Mohammed Fozan, a computer technician who was arrested in Syria in 2005 on his way to build websites for Islamic militants in Iraq. He was extradited to Saudi Arabia and placed in the rehabilitation program. Today, he works as a computer programmer in the Transportation Ministry while he fixes up a house and waits for his family to choose his bride.
"I just want to get on with my life," he said, eating fish and chicken with sheiks and security officials, the likes of whom years earlier he despised as supporters of the infidel West's war against Islam. "When I adopted that radical way of thinking, it was without analysis. I just took it because I felt a responsibility for all those Iraqis dying."
He glanced down at his plate and smiled. "You could say the government cleaned the hard drive of my mind. There were bad viruses and things in there."
Free from Guantanamo
Former Guantanamo detainees possess a quieter, more subtle air than reformed militants such as Fozan. Many of them deny they were extremists and, although not wanting to discuss how they ended up in Cuba, say they were victims of circumstance. One man said he was on a rug-buying trip to Afghanistan when he was arrested; another said he was on a humanitarian mission to repair mosques when he was taken prisoner with Taliban fighters.
U.S. authorities say the men were "enemy combatants" who enlisted to fight with Islamic militants. The Pentagon has been repatriating Saudi prisoners and those of other nationalities over the last year under international pressure to free Guantanamo detainees who had not been charged with war crimes.
Christopher Boucek, a Princeton professor doing postdoctoral research on counter-terrorism strategies, lauded the Saudi rehabilitation program as a logical, cost-effective and long-term approach to dealing with the tens of thousands of war-on-terrorism prisoners the U.S. has detained around the world.
