Bored, depressed and stuck in a dead-end job, Khaled al-Bawardi spent just a few hours watching jihadi videos to convince himself that he wanted to fight for militant Islam. It took another six years in Guantanamo Bay, plus a year in religious rehab in Saudi Arabia, to realise there might be better career options. “When I was young, I thought these people were angels and we had to follow them,' said Mr Bawardi, formerly Inmate 68 at Guantanamo and one of hundreds of Saudi al Qaeda suspects arrested after the US invasion of Afghanistan. “Now, though, I can see between right and wrong.' Quietly-spoken, and dressed in a traditional Arab robe and keffiya, Mr Bawardi is an alumnus of the Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Centre for Counselling and Care outside Riyadh, where for the last two years, batches of former Guantanamo inmates have undergone religious “deprogramming' in exchange for their liberty. With its swimming pool, games rooms and therapy courses such as “10 Steps Toward Positive Thinking', it resembles a jihadist's version of London's Priory clinic. Yet like any rehab programme, it also has its recidivists - and Batch 10, to which Mr Bawardi belonged, is a case in point.
The tenth group of Saudis to be flown back from Guantanamo Bay, no less than five of the original 14 who passed through the programme absconded to neighbouring Yemen to re-embrace terrorism. To the embarrassment of their mentors, and the dismay of Washington, one Batch 10 member, Said al-Shihri, has since re-surfaced as no less than deputy leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the movement's new Yemen-based branch. Such “relapses' show how, more than eight years since 9-11, al-Qaeda has confounded its doomsayers with both its resilience and its ever-spreading presence.
When Batch 10 first arrived back at Riyadh airport two years ago, Western diplomats and intelligence officials were becoming increasingly confident that the movement was on its back foot. Last week, though, as diplomats gathered in London for crisis meetings on the future of both Afghanistan and Yemen, the mood was rather less upbeat. Like a global franchise, outlets of the movement have begun baring their teeth throughout a giant arc across Africa and the Middle East, finding new homes in places where the writ of government is weak or non-existent.