Al Qaeda using civilians in south Yemen as human shields: al Fayfi
The Saudi view of the al Fayfi surrender. Earlier reporting here including the alert on France. The murderer of the French engineer was a fan of Anwar Awlaki.
JEDDAH: The Ministry of Interior is expected to release details soon of a Saudi on its 2009 list of persons wanted in connection with security issues who has expressed the wish to return from Afghanistan, sources have told Okaz/Saudi Gazette.
The move would reduce the list to 70, following the ministry statement Friday announcing the return of Jabir Bin Jibran Ali Al-Faifi from Yemen.
A Yemeni official told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that security authorities in the Lawdar area of the Abyan province in south Yemen took Al-Faifi into custody on Sep. 9 after he had informed them of his whereabouts with other members of the so-called Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and his desire to hand himself in.
The official said that a second member of the organization, Jalal Al-Saidi, handed himself in at the same time in Lawdar, and that the two events happened during a two-week long Yemeni security forces campaign in Ramadan in pursuit of Al-Qaeda members who managed to flee.
Details obtained by Okaz/Saudi Gazette suggest that Al-Faifi was prompted to consider returning after seeing Al-Qaeda using members of the local population as “human shields” during the battles, leading to an undeclared number of deaths.
Al-Faifi reportedly underwent a “rethink” and turned his back on his former ideology, leading him to contact the Muhammad Bin Naif Al-Munasaha Center where he had previously been put through programs for terrorist rehabilitation.
In the telephone call Al-Faifi reportedly expressed his “utter conviction” of the false nature of Al-Qaeda’s ideology and also revealed that he had recruited 20 young Saudis to the organization.
Seven wanted persons repatriated from Guantanamo and later put through the Al-Munasaha program remain at large in Yemen. Saeed Al-Shehri, cited as the “second man” in Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Ibrahim Al-Rubaish, Murtadha Muqrim, Adnan Al-Sa’igh, Othman Al-Ghamdi, Turki Asiri, and Mish’al Al-Shadoukhi are all named on the Ministry of Interior Feb. 2009 list of wanted.
In announcing the surrender of Al-Faifi Friday, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said that the “tables have turned” on followers of “deviant ideology” abroad.
“They now find themselves tools in the hands of enemies of the country,” he said. “They are used as fuel for division… thrown into battlegrounds serving only the plans of enemies of the Ummah and the propagation of chaos…”
