Only 10 of 129 Saudis 'still in Guantanamo'

Just 10 out of a previous total of 129 Saudi detainees now remain at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a local daily reported on Sunday. "There are only 10 out of 129 detainees" still being held in the prison, Al-Medina daily quoted a representative of the detainees' families, Abdullah al-Jaid, as saying. The rest have all been released. The United States has freed and returned to Saudi Arabia many Saudis who were held in the notorious prison created after the September 11 attacks to lock up suspects captured during the US "war on terror." Most were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Three Saudi prisoners died in detention between 2006 and 2007. A senior Saudi counter-terror official said on June 20, 2010 that 20 percent of former Guantanamo prisoners who graduated from Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation programme resumed contacts with Islamist militants. Several of them have since been killed or captured. The rehabilitation programme aims to convince the ex-prisoners through Islamic teachings that the radical ideology of the Al-Qaeda extremist group, which claimed the 9/11 attacks, is wrong. It also offers financial inducements and supervision via the former militants' families aimed at preventing them from resuming extremist activities.