After Guantanamo, 'Reintegration' for Saudis

They are under substantial pressure to return to the halfway house. "Everyone has come back. One was late, and he called to say he had an accident and would be late. Another got an extra day or so because he was married," the Saudi official said. "The social responsibility puts pressure on them. If they don't show up, then we will tell the Americans, who won't release any more Saudis."

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When Dossari arrived in Riyadh with 15 other detainees, they stepped onto a green carpet and were welcomed by senior government officials. Dossari said he kissed the ground in elation.

The former detainees are required to report regularly on their whereabouts, information that is passed on to Washington. "The U.S. is more comfortable sending them back as they've seen the effectiveness of our program," a Saudi official said.

U.S. and Saudi officials doubt, however, that the program could be adapted to Yemen, Somalia and other countries that lack appropriate resources or strong central governments. Hodgkinson said the program uniquely fits in Saudi culture.

"It's hard to replicate that environment," Hodgkinson said. "There are things we can learn from what they've done. It is a good model, but it is not as ideally suited for us to try to implement at Guantanamo Bay."

U.S. officials never formally cleared Dossari for release but agreed to transfer him home under the repatriation arrangement. They had alleged that he was a terrorist who at one point traveled to the United States to give fiery sermons about jihad, but Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, Dossari's U.S. attorney, said his client's freedom at home proves he never should have been at Guantanamo.

Now living in the Saudi port city of Dammam, Dossari describes his detention in Guantanamo as his "black days" and says he was mistreated, without offering details. He said he considers the Saudi program a "gift from Allah."

Another former Guantanamo detainee, Khalid al-Hubayshi, 32, now works in the customer service department of a local Saudi Internet provider. He was married in February with the help of $20,000 from the Saudi government, which bought him a white Toyota Corolla upon his release and continues to provide him a monthly stipend of $800.

Hubayshi was a self-proclaimed jihadist enraged by images of Muslims massacred during the wars in Bosnia and went to the Philippines to fight. He was training in Afghanistan when U.S. forces began bombing there, and said he was sold to Pakistani authorities and was later turned over to U.S. officials.

"I was not there to fight Americans, but if the Americans had come into ground battle in Afghanistan, either I would have killed him or he would have killed me," Hubayshi said. "I was young. I was idealistic. I was full of zeal."

Hubayshi said he is unsure why he was sent home ahead of others with less involvement in Islamic insurgency. He said he told U.S. interrogators during more than 100 sessions that he was not a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Unlike Dossari, Hubayshi -- among a small group of Saudis to leave Guantanamo in 2005 -- was imprisoned for nearly a year after his return to Saudi Arabia. But ultimately senior Saudi officials told him that he had learned his lesson.

Whether that turns out to be true is the central question for everyone, experts said.

"The proof will ultimately be in the pudding," said Bradford A. Berenson, a Washington lawyer who was associate counsel to Bush from 2001 to 2003. "If a lot of them end up in terror cells and on battlefields, we'll know that it doesn't work well enough to trust."

Correspondent Faiza Saleh Ambah in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.