Violent jihadists go to rehab at '5-star' Saudi centre

Riyadh's Mohammed bin Nayef Counselling and Care Centre, a cushy halfway house between prison and freedom, spotlights a controversial Saudi strategy for tackling homegrown extremists.

While the global fight against terrorism is often associated with drone strikes and torture, the philosophy that underpins the centre's approach is that extremism requires not coercion but an ideological cure.

Overseen by clerics and psychologists, it works to prevent convicts who have served their sentences from returning to jihad, through what it calls religious counselling and ideological detoxification.

"Our focus is on correcting their thoughts, their misconceptions, their deviation from Islam," Yahya Abu Maghayed, a director at the centre, said while giving AFP a golf cart tour of the sprawling, palm tree-lined complex.

The convicts are housed in a series of low-slung buildings, outfitted with large-screen televisions and king-size beds, all framed by manicured lawns.

Many linked to groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Taliban walk around freely in flowing white robes, and have access to a spacious gym, a banquet hall and furnished apartments reserved for visits from spouses.

"We make the 'beneficiaries' feel they are normal people and still have a chance — a chance to return to society," Abu Maghayed said, insisting the centre refrained from calling them prisoners or inmates.

Saudi Arabia, long accused of exporting its ultraconservative Wahhabist Sunni doctrine around the world, is itself a victim of domestic terror attacks.