November 03, 2008	Monday	Ziqa'ad 4, 1429

RIYADH, Nov 2: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown shook hands with former detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at a ‘deradicalisation centre’ in Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

Brown visited a militants’ ‘half-way house’ on the outskirts of Riyadh that was designed to bridge the gap between the high security prison and release.

He met six of the roughly 1,200 people at the facility including Juma Al-Dossary, 35, and Ganim Al-Harbi, 34, who both spent six years in Guantanamo.

Brown shook their hands and wished them well during the visit, which came on the second day of his four-day tour of Gulf states during which he is trying to persuade them to extend funding for the International Monetary Fund.

The facility, where those attending undergo training in fields including religion and psychology, also has a swimming pool, gymnasium and other sporting facilities.

Britain is one of Washington’s key allies in the ‘war on terror’ and has thousands of troops stationed in Afghanistan and

Iraq.

Saudi Arabia announced earlier this month that it would try almost 1,000 defendants in the first court cases of Al Qaeda suspects after more than five years of deadly militant violence.—AFP