What Is This World Coming To?

An Internet posting purportedly by al-Qaida in Yemen says the group’s No. 2 is a Saudi national who is a former Guantanamo detainee.

The Yemeni group - known as “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” - posted the statement this week on a militant Web site that regularly carries al-Qaida messages.

It says the man returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba about a year ago and from there went to Yemen to join the terror group, where he currently ranks #2.

The reports said almost half the remaining detainees in Guantanamo were Yemenis and that efforts to repatriate them depended in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program - partly financed by the US - similar to the Saudi one.

Saudi Arabia has previously claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism.

The Pentagon has said on at least two occasions - including earlier this month - that dozens of released Guantanamo detainees have “returned to the fight” but it has provided scant detail. A Saudi security official told the paper that Shihri had disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia last year after finishing the rehabilitation program.

A Yemeni journalist who interviewed al-Qaeda’s leaders in Yemen last year, Abdulela Shaya, confirmed to the paper that the deputy leader was Shihri, the former Guantanamo detainee.

Shaya told the Times that Shihri had described to him his journey from Cuba to Yemen and had supplied his Guantanamo detention number, 372.

That is the correct number, Pentagon documents show.