A rare look inside a Saudi prison that showers terrorists with perks
Beyond a heavy iron gate, its bars painted a cheerful lavender, a red carpet stretches the length of a long hallway, where each of the 38 private cells has a queen-size bed, a fridge, a television and a shower.
Here, just around the corner from the prison ATM, married inmates are allowed to spend three to five private hours with their wives at least once a month, with fresh linens and tea and sweets on the nightstand.
Nearly 1,100 high-security prisoners, all of them jailed on terrorism-related charges, are serving time in this prison a few miles south of Riyadh. Al-Hair is the largest of five high-security Saudi prisons established in the past decade to deal with a growing terrorism threat, first from al-Qaeda and more recently from the Islamic State.
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The Saudi government essentially puts each inmate’s family on welfare. The government gives them money for food, rent and school fees, and it pays for airfare and hotel expenses for families to come visit — even for foreign prisoners whose families live overseas. Escorted by guards, many prisoners (except those convicted of murder) are allowed to attend funerals and weddings of close family members, and they are given as much as $2,600 in cash to present as a wedding gift.
After the presentation, we visited the Family Home, a hotel within the prison that is used to reward prisoners for good behavior. The hotel has 18 large suites, which can sleep as many as nine family members and have lots of fresh flowers, a well-stocked buffet and a playground for children.
Officials said the government spent $35 million last year on those perks.
“Just because someone is a criminal, we do not punish his family, too,” Ahmed said. “Our strategy is to take care of these people to make the community better. This is what Islam tells us to do.”
“I don’t think we should be reflexively opposed to these programs,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University. “The hard-core, wild-eyed fanatics we are never going to rehabilitate, but a solution that says they are all the same and we should lock them away forever isn’t effective, either.”
Hoffman said a 20 percent recidivism rate is far better than the 70 to 75 percent recidivism rate for violent criminals in the United States. He said prisons without rehabilitation programs can become “terrorist universities” that turn minor offenders into hardened militants. He also said that inmates who are coaxed away from radical thinking can also provide valuable intelligence about terror groups.
“Programs like this can be enormously effective,” he said.
To be absolutely clear, Saudi Arabia has a poor human rights record, and the fact that no prisoners were tortured in front of me is not proof that it doesn’t happen.
A rare look inside a Saudi prison that showers terrorists with perks
Disclaimer: Large parts of the article were omitted intentionally to keep relevance to the topic at-hand. Please read the actual article for details.
The article discusses a few different aspects of prison life including allegations of rampant torture, and violation of human rights. I’d like to draw your attention to, given the current circumstances around the world, do you think the Saudi model of in-prison/post-prison rehab model is working, and effective?
What possible flaws do you see, and why? What possible benefits do you see, and how are they beneficial?