Guantánamo detainee resurfaces in terrorist group

Guantánamo detainee resurfaces in terrorist group

By Robert F. Worth
Friday, January 23, 2009
BEIRUT: The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy
leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential
complications in carrying out the executive order that President Barack
Obama signed that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a
deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in
September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a
Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing
with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group
and was confirmed by a U.S. counterterrorism official. "They're one and
the same guy," said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he
was discussing an intelligence analysis. "He returned to Saudi Arabia in
2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear."

The development came as Republican legislators criticized the plan to
close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in the absence of any measures
for dealing with current detainees. But it also helps explain why the
new administration wants to move cautiously, taking time to work out a
plan to cope with the complications.

Almost half the camp's remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to
repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni
rehabilitation program - financed in part by the United States - similar
to the Saudi one. The Saudi government has claimed that no graduate of
its program has returned to terrorism.

"The lesson here is: Whoever receives former Guantánamo detainees needs
to keep a close eye on them," the U.S. official said.

Although the Pentagon has said that dozens of released Guantánamo
detainees have "returned to the fight," its claim is difficult to
document and has been met with skepticism. In any case, few of the
former detainees, if any, are thought to have joined the leadership of a
major terrorist organization like Al Qaeda in Yemen, a mostly homegrown
group that experts say has been reinforced lately by an infusion of
foreign fighters.

Long considered a haven for jihadists, Yemen, a desperately poor country
in the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, has witnessed a rising
number of deadly attacks over the past year. U.S. officials say they
suspect that Shihri may have been involved in the double car bombings
outside the U.S. Embassy in Sana on Sept. 16 that killed 16 people,
including six of the attackers.

In the Internet statement, Al Qaeda in Yemen identified its new deputy
leader as Abu Sayyaf al-Shihri, saying he returned from Guantánamo to
his native Saudi Arabia and then traveled to neighboring Yemen "more
than 10 months ago." That corresponds roughly to the return of Shihri, a
Saudi who was released from Guantánamo in November 2007.

"Abu Sayyaf" is a nom de guerre, commonly used among jihadists in place
of their real name or first name.

A Saudi security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said
that Shihri had disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia last year
after finishing the rehabilitation program.

A Yemeni journalist who interviewed Al Qaeda's leaders in Yemen last
year, Abdulela Shaya, confirmed Thursday that the deputy leader was
indeed Shihri, the former Guantánamo detainee. Shaya, in a telephone
interview, said Shihri had described to him his journey from Cuba to
Yemen and supplied his Guantánamo detention number, 372. That is the
correct number, Pentagon documents show.

"It seems certain from all the sources we have that this is the same
individual who was released from Guantánamo in 2007," said Gregory
Johnsen, a terrorism analyst and the editor of a forthcoming book,
"Islam and Insurgency in Yemen."

Shihri, 35, trained in urban warfare tactics at a camp north of Kabul,
Afghanistan, according to documents released by the Pentagon as part of
his Guantánamo dossier. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, he traveled to Afghanistan via Bahrain and Pakistan, and later
he told American investigators that his intention was to do relief work,
the documents say. He was wounded in an airstrike and spent a month and
a half recovering in a hospital in Pakistan.

The documents state that Shihri met with a group of "extremists" in Iran
and helped them get into Afghanistan. They also say he was accused of
trying to arrange the assassination of a writer, in accordance with a
fatwa, or religious order, issued by an extremist cleric.

However, under a heading describing reasons for Shihri's possible
release from Guantánamo, the documents say he claimed that he traveled
to Iran "to purchase carpets for his store in Riyadh." They also say
that he denied any knowledge of terrorists or association with any, and
that he "related that if released, he would like to return to Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, wherein he would reunite with his family."

"The detainee stated he would attempt to work at his family's furniture
store if it is still in business," the documents said.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, Khalid al-Hammadi
from Sana and Muhammad al-Milfy from Beirut.