Terrorist rehab. It sounds like the name of a new comedy on Fox, but it’s actually a serious idea that’s won support from a broad swath of liberals.
A Minnesota judge recently offered Somalian immigrant and convicted terrorist-sympathizer Abdullahi Yusuf an interesting choice. Stay in prison or be released into a fledgling militant rehabilitation program. To no one’s surprise, Yusuf was arrested within two months of his probation for consuming pro-ISIS media.
“To devise a program to de-radicalize, we must first know what radicalizes them in the first place,” said Samuel Tadros, a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. “Is it merely violent acts? If that is the case, then no one is a radical until he actually commits an act, which makes the whole venture useless.”
Forced rehab rarely works. Yusuf agreed to the judge’s proposition because he wanted to be released from prison, not because he had any desire to change himself. Terrorists deserve to be behind bars.
“Terrorist rehab is a joke and a total waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” said Col. James Williamson, who founded the group OPSEC that advocates for U.S. Special Forces. “All cases are different as are each of the individuals but as a rule, there is no such thing as rehabilitating a committed jihadist. They should be dealt with by military courts and, if not able to execute under the military courts martial, they should be locked up forever.”
Minnesota desperately needs a viable way to deal with terrorists. The state currently hosts more Somalian refugees than anywhere else in the country. Terrorist rehab, however, is a joke.
A report from the National Counterterrorism Center claims that “at least some of the more than 90 homegrown violent extremists incarcerated in the U.S. who are due to be released in the next five years will probably re-engage in terrorist activity, possibly including attack plotting.”
(Source: Fox News)