US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday he had discussed with Saudi officials putting some of the nearly 100 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo through Riyadh's “terrorist” rehabilitation program. Speaking on the final day of a two-day visit to the Saudi capital, Gates said he raised the issue on Tuesday with Assistant Interior Minister Prince Muhammed Bin Naif, who founded the program which has processed 117 Saudi ex-Guantanamo detainees back to civilian life. “I did raise with (Prince Muhammed Bin Naif) our positive impressions of the rehabilitation-repatriation program in Saudi Arabia,” Gates told reporters. Their talks “explored the possibility of some of the Yemeni detainees coming through that system.” Gates said no specific request was made by the United States, which is reluctant to release the Yemeni detainees back to their own country for fear they would quickly rejoin militant groups. “It was more a general conversation about the capability and the possibility,” Gates said. The Yemenis have been held by for up to seven years in the US military-run “war-on-terror” prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Gates praised the Saudi program, which claims a 90-percent success rate, with only about a dozen of the former Guantanamo prisoners returning to militant or criminal activities. The scheme emphasizes wooing the former prisoners back into Saudi society with schooling in acceptable Islamic behavior and generous financial support for their families. It has also processed more than 150 men arrested by the Saudi government for involvement in what Riyadh calls illicit jihad, or holy war. “I think they have done as good or better a job of that than anybody,” Gates said. He said the program, which is heavily infused with Saudi culture, would probably be most suited for Yemeni detainees with ties to Saudi Arabia, which lies just on the north border of Yemen. “I think the notion would be, if it worked at all, it would be those with strong Saudi family connections, or strong connections to Saudi Arabia,” he added. But he said the talks had not gone far enough to sort out what would happen to the Yemenis after they passed through the program. “It's about getting them into the program, not getting them out,” Gates said. Yemen has not yet offered its own plan for the men, who make up the biggest number of about 240 detainees remaining at the prison.
