Batch 10

Batch 10 is a name journalists have given to the tenth batch of former Saudi captives to be repatriated to Saudi Arabian custody.[1][2][3] Five of the fourteen captives in this group repatriated to Saudi captivity on November 9, 2007 were among the eleven former Guantanamo captives to be listed on the 85 men on the Saudi list of most wanted suspected terrorists, published on February 3, 2009. One of the cohort, Said Ali al-Shihri, became second in command of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

According to Peter Taylor, reporting for the BBC, his team found that the cohort of Saudis repatriated in November 2007 problematic.[1] He reported that many of these captives were not rehabilitated. He reported that five of the fourteen men in batch 10 escaped to Yemen, and joined jihadists there. The version of the men's names were Mohammed al-Awfi, Said al-Shihri, Yussef al-Shihri, Murtadha Ali Saeed Magram and Turki Meshawi Zayid al-Assiri. Said al-Shihri and Mohammed al-Awfi appeared in an alarming video in January 2009. Said al-Shihri took a leadership role in Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Yussef al-Shihri was killed in a shoot-out with Saudi security officials. He is alleged to have tried to cross the Saudi border dressed in a Burkha, an all-encompassing female garment, armed with a suicide belt. Taylor reports that Murtadha Ali Saeed Magram and Turki Meshawi Zayid al-Assiri remain at large. The other nine men repatriated in batch 10 were: Zaid Muhamamd Sa'id Al Husayn, Sultan Ahmed Dirdeer Musa Al Uwaydha, Khalid Saud Abd Al Rahman Al Bawardi, Faha Sultan, Fahd Umr Abd Al Majid Al Sharif, Nayif Abdallah Ibrahim Al Nukhaylan, Abdullah Abd Al Mu'in Al Wafti, Hani Saiid Mohammad Al Khalif and Jabir Hasan Muhamed Al Qahtani.[4][5]

References

  1. ^ a b Peter Taylor (2010-01-13). "Yemen al-Qaeda link to Guantanamo Bay prison". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2010-01-16. Mr Obama's dilemma is dramatically illustrated by a BBC investigation into what happened to the 14 detainees of Batch 10, who were flown home to Saudi Arabia just over two years ago.
  2. ^ Richard Spencer; Adrian Blomfield; Mike Pflanz; Ben Farmer; Colin Freeman; Sean Rayment (2010-01-31). "Recruits seek out al-Qaeda's deadly embrace across a growing arc of jihadist terror". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2010-02-03. The tenth group of Saudis to be flown back from Guantanamo Bay, no less than five of the original 14 who passed through the programme absconded to neighbouring Yemen to re-embrace terrorism. To the embarrassment of their mentors, and the dismay of Washington, one Batch 10 member, Said al-Shihri, has since re-surfaced as no less than deputy leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the movement's new Yemen-based branch. The group opened up the latest frontier in the war on terror last month, when it claimed to have groomed the so-called Detroit "Underpants Bomber", Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
  3. ^ Richard Spencer; Colin Freeman (2010-02-02). "Al-Qaeda's new world order". The Age. Retrieved 2010-04-19. With its swimming pool, games rooms and therapy courses such as '10 Steps Toward Positive Thinking', it resembles a jihadist's version of a mental health treatment clinic. Yet like any rehab program, it also has its recidivists - and 'batch 10', to which Bawardi belonged, is a case in point.
  4. ^ OARDEC (2008-10-09). "Consolidated chronological listing of GTMO detainees released, transferred or deceased" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-12-27. Retrieved 2008-12-28.
  5. ^ Mshari Al-Zaydi (2009-02-06). "A Clear Generation Gap in Saudi Most Wanted List". Asharq Alawsat. Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2009-02-06.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)