RIYADH, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has released over 700 suspected militants after clerics "corrected" their thinking in a special programme aimed at stemming a three-year-old campaign of violence by al Qaeda, officials said. "They are sympathisers. There are many of this kind of people, who are subject to the process of an advisory committee. Hundreds of them have gone through this and been released," Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki said.
| We've noticed |
Turki said the men had believed in 'takfiri' ideology, which permits branding Muslim governments or ordinary Muslims as infidels because of policies, behaviour or beliefs. Militants around the world swearing allegiance to the al Qaeda network headed by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden use this idea to justify attacks on governments, foreigners and civilians.
In Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda supporters began a campaign to bring down the U.S.-allied royal family with suicide bombings in May 2003 against Western housing compounds in Riyadh. Officials say more than 136 militants and 150 foreigners and Saudis, including security forces, have died since then, but the violence has ebbed in the face of toughened security measures against what official rhetoric calls "the deviant group".
Sheikh Mohammed al-Fifi, a member of the committee leading the dialogue with suspects, said this week that those released, accounted for over 90 percent of all detainees whose thinking clerics had tried to "correct". He put the number of those freed at around 700. "First we would deal with them in groups, then individually as they related their thoughts," he told the al-Madina newspaper in an interview published this week. "They became like this through provocative religious edicts on the Internet or in books, or via preachers who stir up young people's passions in sermons and lectures," he added. Fifi said he did not blame Saudi Arabia's controversial educational curriculum which foreign rights groups and Western governments have said promote extremism.
| "No, no, we're the Religion Of Peace. Haven't you read our press release? Oh, you have..." |
Observers say Arab governments' close ties with Washington and apparent inability to influence its pro-Israel foreign policy in the Arab world is another key factor behind militancy. Interior Ministry spokesman Turki said detainees believed to have clear links to militant attacks were being prepared for trial. He declined to say how many they were. But the process has been delayed because Saudi Arabia's underdeveloped justice system -- where religious scholars sit as judges ruling on the basis of Islamic Sharia law -- does not yet provide for courts competent to view such cases.