| Arabia |
| Frenchman's Killer Gets Death in Yemen, Awlaqi 10 Years |
| 2011-01-18 |
| [An Nahar] A court in Sanaa on Monday sentenced to death a Yemeni accused of killing a Frenchie and handed down a 10-year jail sentence in absentia to radical U.S.-born holy man Anwar al-Awlaqi. Hisham Mohammed Assem, who was given the death penalty by a Sanaa criminal court after being convicted of killing French energy contractor Jacques Spagnolo near Sanaa in October, said in court he will appeal the verdict. The same court sentenced Awlaqi to 10 years in prison for taking part in an gang and incitement to kill foreigners. His relative, Othman al-Awlaqi, was sentenced to eight years on the same charges. Both are on the run and were sentenced in absentia. "This crime (killing Spagnolo) was committed under the incitement of Anwar and Othman al-Awlaqi," the judge said as he read the verdict. The court also accused the three men of "working within a terrorist group." Spagnolo, who worked for energy group OMV, was bumped off at the company's compound in Sanaa on October 6, the same day a British embassy car was targeted by a rocket attack that maimed one person. Assem was overpowered and jugged. At the time, OMV said it saw "no political background for the action taken by the Yemeni security guard" while the defense ministry said Assem had probably acted for personal reasons in what was a criminal matter. However, The infamous However... it stressed that the conclusions were preliminary. Earlier this year U.S. President Barack B.O.Obama's administration authorized the assassination of Awlaqi. In the latest edition of Inspire, the English-language online magazine issued by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Anwar al-Awlaqi renewed a call to strike the American government and citizens, SITE monitoring agency reported Sunday. "Both the (U.S.) government and private citizens should be targeted," he wrote in an article. "America and Americans are the imams of kufr (leaders of disbelief) in this day and age." |
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| Arabia |
| Radical Yemeni cleric Awlaki calls for killing of Americans |
| 2010-11-08 |
| US-born radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al Awlaki has called for the killing of Americans in a new video message posted yesterday on Islamist websites. Awlaki said Americans are from the "party of devils" and that no special religious permissions are needed to kill them, the Associated Press reported. In the 23-minute, Arabic-language message, Awlaki said it was "either them or us." Speaking in Arabic, Awlaki appears sitting behind a desk with a sheathed dagger in his belt. The cleric, who was charged last Tuesday in Yemen over alleged ties to al-Qaeda and incitement to kill foreigners, is also wanted in the US on terrorism charges. Washington linked the young imam and son of a former Yemeni government minister to a shooting rampage last November at a US army base and to the botched Christmas Day 2009 attack on a US airliner. Prosecutors told a Yemeni court specialising in terrorism cases that Awlaki corresponded with Hisham Mohammed Assem, a Yemeni accused of shooting dead French energy contractor Jacques Spagnolo near Sanaa in October, for months and encouraged him to kill foreigners. Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Usama bin Laden and headquarters of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was coming under increasing pressure from Washington to hunt down the cleric. "M. Awlaki is a problem," US Homeland Security and Counterrorism Adviser John Brennan said in January. "He's clearly a part of al-Qaeda in [the] Arabian Peninsula. He's not just a cleric. He is in fact trying to instigate terrorism." Mr Brennan directly accused Awlaki of having links with Major Nidal Hasan, who is suspected of shooting dead 13 people at Fort Hood military base in Texas, and said Awlaki also likely had contact with Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up the Christmas Day plane. |
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| Arabia | |
| Yemen begins trial of radical preacher | |
| 2010-11-03 | |
| [Arab News] Yemen, under pressure to crack down on gunnies operating there after a foiled bomb plot involving US-bound parcels, began the trial in absentia on Tuesday of a radical US-born preacher wanted dead or alive by Washington. Anwar Al-Awlaki, who has been linked to a failed bombing of a US-bound plane in December 2009 that was claimed by Yemen's Al-Qaeda wing, is thought to be hiding in southern Yemen.
"(The three defendants) ... were members of an armed gang that targeted foreigners," the prosecutor said when reading out the charges. The US Treasury has blacklisted Awlaki as a "specially designated global terrorist," a move that freezes any assets he may have under US jurisdiction. Earlier this year, the United States authorized the CIA to capture or kill him. Awlaki has also been linked to an army major who went on a shooting spree that killed 13 people last year at Fort Hood in Texas. The two parcel bombs were intercepted last week on cargo planes in Britain and Dubai are thought to be the work of Al-Qaeda's Yemen-based arm, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), US officials say. Yemeni police jugged a young student at Sanaa University in connection with the parcel bomb plot but released her the next day, saying it had been a case of mistaken identity. | |
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| Arabia |
| Anwar al-Awlaki charged in Yemen with crimes against foreigners |
| 2010-11-02 |
| Yemen, under pressure to crack down on militants operating there after a foiled bomb plot involving US-bound parcels, began the trial in absentia on Tuesday of the radical US-born preacher, wanted dead or alive by Washington. Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been linked to a failed bombing of a US-bound plane in December 2009 that was claimed by Yemen's al Qaeda wing, is thought to be hiding in southern Yemen. Also on Tuesday, the trial of a Yemeni journalist and al-Qaeda expert was set to continue in Sanaa. Abdulelah Shai is being tried for alleged links to al-Qaeda, including helping to publicise the views of Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaqi, who holds both Yemeni and US citizenship, and his relative, Othman al-Awlaqi, were both charged in absentia in a Yemeni court with "incitement to kill foreigners and members of security services." The charges arose during the trial of Hisham Mohammed Assem, a Yemeni, who was in the court on Tuesday to face charges of killing French energy contractor Jacques Spagnolo near Sanaa last month. The court action comes as Yemen is in the spotlight after parcel bombs to the United States were traced to the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The US Treasury has blacklisted Awlaki as a "specially designated global terrorist", a move that freezes any assets he may have under US jurisdiction. Earlier this year, the United States authorised the CIA to capture or kill him. Awlaki has also been linked to an army major who went on a shooting spree that killed 13 people last year at Fort Hood in Texas. |
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