Reeducating Osama Bin Laden's Disciples

60 Minutes: Saudi Government Tries To Rehabilitate Former Guantanamo Prisoners, Jihadists

(CBS)  No one is more central to the rehabilitation of these ex-offenders than Sheik Ahmad Gelan.

Asked what he told them about Jihad, Gelan told Martin, "We told them that Islam doesn't want to send a message that our religion is a bloody religion."

Gelan confounds all your preconceptions about Muslim clerics as stern, remote gray beards. But he memorized the Qur’an when he was still a teenager and is the center's unquestioned religious authority. His job is to guide these men away from Osama bin Laden and back to what he calls true Islam.

"Most Americans, the one Saudi they can all name is Osama bin Laden," Martin told Chris Boucek. "And they all know that most of the hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. Why should Americans take a lesson from the Saudis of all people?"

"A lot of these programs are about recognizing being violent is not a permanent state of ones life. Just as you become radicalized, and there's a process for that, some people go through another process where you leave violence behind. And I think that's the part that is really important," Boucek said.

But here's the most important part: 11 of 117 men returned from Guantanamo have shown up again on Saudi Arabia's most wanted terrorist list.

"You can call that a ten percent failure rate or you can call that a 90 percent success rate," Martin remarked to Major General Yousef Mansour.

"Ninety percent," Mansour said. "I always take the glass you say this is half full of empty, full."

General Mansour was not laughing when Mohammed al Awfi became a colossal embarrassment to the soft approach. Awfi came back from six years in Guantanamo in a back brace, went through rehabilitation, but then traded the back brace for a bandolier - and along with another graduate of the program showed up in Yemen on an al Qaeda video denouncing the Saudi government.

But according to the Saudis, Awfi's family convinced him to turn himself in and his next video was a full confession on Saudi TV. His cooperation with the government earned him some soft prison time, confined to an apartment where his family can visit.

Mansour acknowledged that Awfi broke the rules and violated the government's trust.

"He ran away. And now he's back and he gets to see his wife every day," Martin remarked. "He has to be the only ex-terrorist in the world who's living in an apartment with the permission of his government."

"Well, he's under the government siege. He can't go out," Mansour said.