US News

Ex-Gitmo goons did it!

A Yemeni al Qaeda faction — whose masterminds had been released from Guantanimo Bay — claimed responsibility yesterday for orchestrating the bungled Christmas Day terror attack aboard a Detroit-bound jet.

Said Ali al Shihri and Muhammad al Awfi were captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, ABC News reported.

They were freed from Gitmo in November 2007 and promptly took up arms again against the United States after completing a bizarre “art-rehabilitation therapy” program in Saudi Arabia as a condition of their release.

“The so-called rehabilitation programs are a joke,” a US diplomat told ABC.

Many of the art sessions consist of little more than painting and coloring with crayons, the source said.

The two belong to the group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is led by Osama bin Laden’s former personal secretary.

The group, known as AQAP, posted a statement on its Voice of Jihad Web site boasting it had overcome the sophisticated US security and intelligence apparatus.

Failed bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab “managed to penetrate all devices and modern advanced technology and security checkpoints in international airports bravely without fear of death,” the group said.

Al Shihri, who had been known as prisoner #372 and al Awif, prisoner #333, scurried straight to Yemen after completing their “rehab” programs.

Al Awfi reportedly turned himself into Yemeni authorities in February and al Shihri might have been killed in one of two recent attacks on al Qaeda strongholds.

On Dec. 24, AQAP’s leaders — who included radical imam Anwar Aulaqi, a confidant of Fort Hood Massacre gunman Abdul Malik Hasan — was dealt a major blow at the hands US-trained Yemeni military forces.

More than 30 of its members were reportedly killed, although it’s unclear if al Shihri was among the dead.

The fanatical group claimed yesterday the attempted plane bombing over Detroit was in retaliation.

With Tom Topousis & AP

chuck.bennett@nypost.com