Former detainee is now al-Qaida deputy in Yemen

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainee as the deputy leader of al-Qaida's Yemeni branch has highlighted the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, 35, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital, San'a, in September.

He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with al-Qaida in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the group and was confirmed by a U.S. counterterrorism official. "They're one and the same guy," said the official, who insisted on anonymity.

The development came as Republican legislators criticized the plan to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in the absence of any measures for dealing with current detainees. It also helps explain why the new administration wants to move cautiously.

Almost half the camp's remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to repatriate them depend, in part, on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program — financed in part by the U.S. — similar to the Saudi one. The Saudi government has claimed no graduate of its program returned to terrorism.

"The lesson here is: Whoever receives former Guantánamo detainees needs to keep a close eye on them," the U.S. official said.

U.S. officials said they suspect al-Shihri may have been involved in the double car bombings outside the U.S. Embassy in San'a last September that killed 16 people, including six of the attackers.