Escape in Yemen Stalls Terror Trial
By Ahmed Al-Haj
Associated Press
Monday, February 6, 2006
SANAA, Yemen, Feb. 5 -- An al Qaeda operative sentenced to death for plotting the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in 2000 was among a group of convicts who escaped from a prison in Yemen last week, Interpol said Sunday in issuing a global security alert.
Officials set up checkpoints around the capital city of Sanaa, where the prison is located, to try to catch the escapees before they could flee to the protection of mountain tribes, according to a Yemeni security official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.
Some mountainous tribal areas are essentially outside the control of Yemen's central government, raising fears the fugitives could hide there before escaping the country.
The Yemeni government had no official comment.
Yemeni officials said Jamal Badawi, who had been convicted of plotting, preparing and helping to carry out the Cole bombing, was among the fugitives, Interpol said. Badawi was one of two men sentenced to death in September 2004 for plotting the attack, in which a pair of suicide bombers blew up an explosives-laden boat next to the destroyer as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.
A Yemeni security official announced the escape of convicted al Qaeda members Friday but did not provide names. The official said that the escapees had all been sentenced last year on terrorism-related charges.
Interpol said in a statement that at least 13 of the 23 escapees were convicted al Qaeda fighters.
The convicts escaped through a 140-yard-long tunnel "dug by the prisoners and co-conspirators outside," Interpol said. The Yemeni official said the prison is in the headquarters of the country's military intelligence services in the center of the capital.
Another escapee was identified as Fawaz Yahya Rabeiei, considered by Interpol to be one of those responsible for a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast. That attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Rabeiei was also convicted for his role in an attack on a helicopter carrying Hunt Oil Co. employees a month later and the detonation of explosives at a civil aviation authority building.
"We are closely monitoring the situation at this time, and we will work with our domestic and international partners to actively pursue these dangerous terrorists," FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said in Washington.
Interpol's urgent global security alert, known as an "orange notice," was issued "because the escape and unknown whereabouts of al-Qaida terrorists constituted a clear and present danger to all countries," the statement said.
Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble urged Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, to provide names, photographs, fingerprints and other information about the suspects. He called on the agency's 184 member states "to take all relevant precautionary measures both at and inside their borders" and to help Yemen locate and capture the fugitives.
The escape came a day before the expected start of a trial of 15 people charged with involvement in terrorist operations in Yemen, including Mohammed Hamdi Ahdal, another suspected plotter of the Cole and Limburg bombings. The trial was postponed indefinitely.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.