Qaeda field commander in Saudi custody still a threat from prison

Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Feb.19 (ANI): The Saudi Arabian Government and the country's investigators continue to see a jailed Muhammad al-Awfi, a one-time Guantanamo Bay detainee, as a major threat to world peace, even from prison.

According to Fox News, al-Awfi was captured by Yemeni authorities and transferred to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. He was an Al Qaeda field commander in Yemen after his release from a Saudi "rehabilitation" program.

Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Awfi lived quietly in Saudi Arabia for a year after his release from Guantanamo Bay in November 2007, but he re-emerged last month in a jihadist video that showed him in Yemen, wearing a bandolier of bullets and threatening the United States.

The Saudi rehabilitation program entices prisoners with gifts and good treatment and releases them to their families' custody when they sign pledges to abandon terror.

But according to David Draper, director of Strategic Operations at the terror watchdog NEFA Foundation, the inmates' radical commitment cannot be overcome with kindness. (ANI)