Security: Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the attempted destruction of Flight 253 were released from Guantanamo two years ago. The case for indefinite detention has been made once again, and not in Illinois.

Sometimes America's chickens do come home to roost. In a statement released Monday, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which counts among its leadership two former Guantanamo detainees, claimed responsibility for the attempted destruction of Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the crotch bomber, told FBI agents he was trained for his Christmas Day mission in Yemen by top leaders of the group who provided him with training and the explosive material needed to bring the passenger jet down. He also told FBI agents that more just like him were in Yemen ready to strike soon.

Two of those leaders — former Guantanamo prisoner No. 333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner No. 372, Said Ali Shari — were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi.

As ABC News has reported, American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials. Under the program, former detainees are given paint and crayons, presumably to diagram future attacks.

In May, Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke to Saudi Assistant Minister of the Interior Muhammed bin Nayaf about sending the roughly 100 Yemeni detainees now in the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabia. Gates said he spoke to Nayaf about "our positive impression of the ... the rehabilitation (and) repatriation program in Saudi Arabia."

Recently the administration announced plans to send six Gitmo Yemenites back home to Yemen with more to follow. "We have about 90 Yemenis left in Gitmo," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich. "They should stay there. They should not go back to Yemen." Nor should they go anywhere else.

In May, former USS Cole commander Kirk Lippold warned that "the impact of turning Yemeni detainees over to either Saudi Arabia or Yemen is an unacceptable compromise to our national security. . .. Transferring Yemeni detainees to Saudi Arabia will inevitably lead to more terrorists on the battlefield."

How right he was. The battlefield is not only in Afghanistan, but also over the skies of American cities such as Detroit.

Lippold vividly remembers the 2000 bombing of his ship in the Yemeni harbor of Aden, killing 17 American sailors. All the suspects convicted of being involved in the attack on the Cole have either been released by Yemeni authorities or managed to escape in a 2008 jailbreak.

The case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been lawyered up, read his Miranda rights and treated for his burns at taxpayer expense, should hopefully put an end to plans to transfer other Gitmo detainees to a prison in Thomson, Ill., a sleepy town of 450 people near the Mississippi River about 150 miles west of Chicago.

We are told the maximum security prison is safe and will be upgraded, creating jobs. Not so safe will be the people of Thomson and surrounding communities.

Suppose another radicalized jihadist like Abdulmutallab or Maj. Nidal Hassan, charged with the Fort Hood massacre, shows up with a bomb strapped to his body or a pocket full of ammo at a local school, post office or VFW hall. Suppose the next Beslan is in America's heartland?

If national security is the pre-eminent consideration here, we would take the advice of New York's Peter King, ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, and have a military tribunal try Abdulmutallab. Treating him as the prisoner of war he is could lead to extracting information that could foil future al-Qaida operations.

If we have learned anything from this episode, it is that terror attacks should not be treated like convenience-store robberies, and that jihadists, once captured, should be locked up and kept locked up, with the key to their cells at Gitmo thrown away.