Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 03/2015

Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters

Gilles de Kerchove, Jacob Bundsgaard, Maj. Gen. Doug Stone, USMC (ret.), Matthew Levitt

February 2015

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Abstract

On February 20, Gilles de Kerchove, Jacob Bundsgaard, Doug Stone, and Matthew Levitt addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Kerchove is the European Union Counterterrorism Coordinator. Bundsgaard is Lord Mayor of Aarhus, Denmark, and a prominent player in the city's widely known jihadist rehabilitation program. Stone, a retired Marine major general, oversaw all theatre interrogation and detention in Iraq during the post-2006 surge; he now works for the UN and helped develop the Rome Memorandum, the seminal best-practices compendium for rehabilitation and reintegration of violent extremist offenders. Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Institute. The following is a rapporteur's summary of their remarks.