Ahmed al-Shayea was known as the "living suicide bomb" — the young Saudi driver of a fuel tanker bomb in Iraq who survived to renounce violence and warn his countrymen of the dangers of jihad.
In the process he became Saudi Arabia's poster boy for a high-profile jihadist de-programming initiative whose secondary purpose is to discourage Saudis from joining al-Qaida. With his burned face and mangled hands, al-Shayea was presented as a vivid warning to young Saudis about the perils of jihad and the untrustworthiness of al-Qaida, which he claimed had tricked him into driving the tanker bomb, which killed 12 people in 2004.
That was until November. Then al-Shayea disappeared from Saudi Arabia, only to reappear reportedly in Syria where — his Twitter feed reveals — he has rejoined the ranks of an al-Qaida franchise, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is engaged in a civil war with other rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad.