Almost two weeks after 23 prisoners suspected of terrorist ties broke out of a maximum-security prison here, the fugitives are emerging as unlikely folk heroes: the men who thumbed their noses at the Yemeni government and, more significantly, at America.
Many Yemenis see the episode as the ultimate response to years of cooperation between the government of Yemen and the United States that has resulted in the arrest of thousands of people, many of whom have been held for long periods without trial. Residents of Sana are now pointing to the audacious, Hollywood-style escape from a maximum-security prison as an example of the unraveling security situation in Yemen and of the growing estrangement between the government and the average citizen.
"Are they seen as heroes here? Certainly," said Muhammad al-Saderi, a leader in Yemen's opposition Nasserist party. "The 23 came from all over the country, and the way it looks to many is that the government isn't just facing off with a few extremist groups, it's facing off with the whole country."
A nationwide manhunt continued Wednesday as the Yemeni government offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the 13 people suspected of being operatives of Al Qaeda among the escapees. Side streets leading to the prison remained blocked off, while security men patrolled in and around the mosque where the men emerged.
Yemeni security agents set up checkpoints within this densely packed city and on roads leading out, while United States warships patrolled the Yemeni shores. Diplomatic and security officials said the men were likely either to sneak across the border with Saudi Arabia into the unforgiving "Empty Quarter" or to take to the sea along human trafficking routes that run across the Gulf of Aden to Somalia.
United States and Yemeni analysts said the circumstances of the escape suggested that the prisoners might have received help from guards or other Yemeni government employees. "It would be hard to imagine pulling something like this off without some inside help," one official in Washington said. "What isn't clear is at what level, and how many people were involved."
The men broke out of the maximum-security prison run by the Political Security Department early on Feb. 3, squeezing through a tunnel leading from the basement prison cell where they were all held to a mosque, on a main street on the edge of the Yemeni capital. They dug the tunnel in the soft soils around the prison in three months using makeshift tools, all the while hiding the operation and the dirt they excavated from the prison authorities.
Among them were Jamal Ahmed al-Badawi, the suspected organizer of the October 2000 bombing of the United States destroyer Cole, who had pulled off a previous prison break, and Fawaz al-Rabeei, who was convicted of leading a cell that bombed the French oil tanker Limburg off the Yemeni coast in 2002.
Also with them was Jaber Elbaneh, an American-Yemeni implicated along with the Lackawanna Six, a reputed sleeper cell in Buffalo, N.Y. Six of the seven pleaded guilty to providing material support to a terrorist organization and are serving prison terms. Mr. Elbaneh was convicted in absentia, and the United States placed a $5 million bounty on his head.
In Washington, the former commander of the Cole said he was outraged that the government allowed the man convicted of plotting the attack to escape from a local prison for a second time. "Justice with respect to those who attacked the U.S.S. Cole is not being served," said Cmdr. Kirk S. Lippold, in an unusual public complaint by a naval officer. He was in command of the Cole in October 2000 when the destroyer was attacked by Qaeda suicide bombers, killing 17 American sailors.
Acknowledging that he was speaking in an interview without official Navy approval, Commander Lippold called on American leaders to do more to pressure the Yemeni government, and to offer help catching the fugitives.
The breakout comes at a particularly difficult moment for the government, which has been fighting rebel Shiite forces near the Saudi border. Last week, 15 rebels and 5 Yemeni soldiers were killed in the clashes. It also raises the threat level for Americans in the country, with the United States Embassy urging them to "review their personal security practices," particularly for those times when they are neither at home nor at work.
"This is more than embarrassing, this is a disaster," said a Western diplomat in Sana, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to embarrass the government. "You can be sure that these men aren't going to go back to being farmers or open convenience stores. They are going to try to get back in the fight."
But Yemenis say cases like that of Mr. Elbaneh who has been held here since 2003, and without a reasonable charge, they say is one reason many sympathize with the escapees. Diplomats said Mr. Elbaneh had been arrested for "financial" crimes, in addition to the warrant by the United States. Yemen's Constitution forbids the government from extraditing him to the United States, said Khaled Saleh Alanesi, a human rights lawyer who represents Mr. Elbaneh and at least one other fugitive. "You won't hear anybody criticizing their escape because their arrests were illegal," Mr. Alanesi said. "After all, who do you think most people sympathize with, the government, or the ones who appear to have gotten away from an unjust imprisonment?"
As men gathered Wednesday for the daily ritual of chewing khat, a leaf chewed by many Yemenis as a mild stimulant, the men, who asked that that their names not be used for fear of retribution, debated the implications of the breakout.
While many expressed sympathy, a heavy-set man who led a political party here added a degree of skepticism. "Most of these guys were old friends of the political security service," he said, speaking of the 1980's, when the security services organized groups of Yemenis to fight in Afghanistan. "You can bet these men were sure that they were going to get out of the prison when they got there." |
Jaber Elbaneh, the al-Qaeda operative who had roamed free in Yemen despite a $5 million reward offered by the U.S. government for his capture, was jailed Sunday by a Yemeni judge. 
Hollywood loves to remake classic movies, and sooner or later it's sure to get around to "The Great Escape," the 1963 thriller based on a real tunnel breakout from a Nazi prison camp during World War II. But this time Al Qaeda's propaganda machine may get the jump on Tinseltown. Earlier this month, in an astonishing tale of life imitating artalbeit with good guys and bad reversing rolesa group of 23 suspected terrorists dug their way to freedom from a basement compound beneath the Political Security Office (PSO), Yemen's main intelligence service, in the capital of Sana. Leading them outin the starring role, as it werewas one Jamal al-Badawi, the mastermind of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. Another escapee was an American Muslim, 
A U.S. citizen with a $5 million bounty on his head for alleged links to an al Qaeda cell in New York state was among 23 prisoners who escaped from a Yemeni prison last week, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. "