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Saudi Arabia frees 1,500 ex-militants
Saudi Arabia, waging a crackdown on militants, has released 1,500 extremists after they repented, a newspaper said on Sunday.
Didn't chop anybody's head off, either. Soddy Arabia's a place where it's more dangerous to be a 19-year-old girl in a parked car than it is to be a murderer.
Maybe she should 'repent' ...
The 1,500 were among 3,200 militants with whom a government-appointed “advice committee” met around 5,000 times since it was formed three years ago, Al-Watan said, quoting committee member Mohammad al-Nujaimi.

The paper did not clarify if the rest had refused to renounce the ideology of “takfeer” - branding other Muslims as infidels in order to legitimise violence against them. Nujaimi said the 1,500 militants who changed their views had renounced Saudi-born Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s call on his followers to “cleanse the Arabian Peninsula of polytheists.”

The advice committee comprises more than 100 Islamic scholars, preachers and experts in Sharia, or Islamic law, in addition to 30 psychologists and social workers, the paper said.
Posted by: Fred 2007-11-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=209434