Saudi freed from Gitmo is now Qaeda leader

“They’re one and the same guy,” confirmed the official.

The development came as Republican legislators criticised the plan to close the Guantánamo Bay,Cuba,detention camp in the absence of any measures for dealing with current detainees. But it also helps explain why the new administration wants to move cautiously,taking time to work out a plan to cope with the complications.

Almost half the camp’s remaining detainees are Yemenis,and efforts to repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation programme — partly financed by the US — similar to the Saudi one. “The lesson here is,whoever receives former Guantánamo detainees needs to keep a close eye on them,” the American official said.

Long considered a haven for jihadists,Yemen has witnessed a rising number of attacks over the past year. American officials say they suspect that Shihri may have been involved in the car bombings outside the American Embassy in Sana last September that killed 16 people,including six attackers.

In the Internet statement,al-Qaeda in Yemen identified its new deputy leader as Abu Sayyaf al-Shihri,saying he returned from Guantánamo to his native Saudi Arabia and then traveled to Yemen “more than 10 months ago”. That corresponds roughly to the return of Shihri.

A Saudi security official said Shihri had disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia last year after finishing the rehabilitation programme.

Yemeni journalist Abdulela Shaya,who interviewed al-Qaeda’s leaders in Yemen last year,confirmed on Thursday that the deputy leader was indeed Shihri,the former Guantánamo detainee. Shaya said Shihri had described to him his journey from Cuba to Yemen and supplied his Guantánamo detention number,372. That is the correct number,Pentagon documents show.

Shihri,35,has been trained in urban warfare tactics at a camp near Kabul according to documents released by the Pentagon. Two weeks after 9/11,he traveled to Afghanistan via Bahrain and Pakistan,and he later told American investigators that his intention was to do relief work,the documents say. He was wounded in an airstrike and spent a month recovering in a hospital in Pakistan. The documents state that Shihri met with a group of “extremists” in Iran and helped them get into Afghanistan.

However,under a heading describing reasons for Shihri’s possible release from Guantánamo,the documents say he claimed that he traveled to Iran “to purchase carpets for his store” in Saudi Arabia. They also say that he denied knowledge of any terrorists or terrorist activities,and that he “related that if released,he would like to return to Riyadh,Saudi Arabia,wherein he would reunite with his family”.