JEDDAH, 29 August 2006 — Nine of 29 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who were repatriated in May and June to the Kingdom have been released from Saudi jails, the Interior Ministry announced yesterday.

Ninety-five of Saudis are still held in at Guantanamo. In July Saudi Ambassador to United States Prince Turki Al-Faisal said he expected all of them to return to Saudi Arabia within a year.

In a report published in Al-Watan newspaper this month, Mohammed Al-Nejaymi, head of the Advisory Correction Committee, said that two former Guantanamo detainees were sentenced to a year in jail.

Al-Nejaymi expected the release of more of the remaining 20 Saudi detainees being held after their return home, but insisted that if any of them was found to have committed any crime in Saudi Arabia or abroad he would be tried and, if found guilty, punished.

Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Al-Turki said detainees who have clear links to militant attacks will be tried. He declined to give their number.

Al-Nejaymi said the advisory committee operates in Riyadh, Madinah and Jeddah, “to keep the detainees close to their families and facilitate visits.”

Over 700 suspected militants have been released after passing through a program aimed to reeducated them on proper Islamic conduct. The program began three years ago after a wave of militant violence struck the Kingdom beginning with attacks on Western compounds in Riyadh in May 2003.

Sheikh Mohammed Al-Fifi, a member of the committee, describes the process of reeducation. “First we would deal with them in groups, then individually as they relay their thoughts,” he told the Al-Madinah 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 through sermons and lectures.”

Al-Turki told Reuters in an interview that those who have been released were not directly involved in the crimes. “They are sympathizers,” he said. “There are many of these kinds of people, who are subject to the process of an advisory committee. Hundreds of them have gone through this and been released... They were arrested because they were suspects, but there was no hard evidence against them linking them to any terrorist act or planning.”

Al-Turki said the men had believed in the ideology of takfir — the practice of a Muslim labeling another Muslim, group of Muslims, Islamic institutions or Islamic governments as being out of the fold of Islam.

Officials say more than 136 militants and 150 foreigners and Saudis, including soldiers, have died since a wave of violence emerged in 2003. The violence has ebbed in the past year in the face of toughened security measures against deviant groups.

Al-Fifi denied accusations that Saudi primary school textbooks helped create the takfir and deviant ideology. Al-Fifi blames the teachers, not the books. “The curriculum is not to blame since we’ve had it for over 30 years. The problem is some of the teachers,” he said.