 Eight al-Qaeda suspects, including an Iraqi with Swiss nationality, admitted in Sana'a Counter-Terrorism Monday, March 21 to planning attacks on Western embassies here, while six convicted terrorists were sentenced to two years in jail in another case. The Sana'a Counter-Terrorism court earlier in the day sentenced six men to two years in prison after they were convicted of forming an armed gang in Afghanistan camps between 1998 and 2002 and were plotting and raising funds for "criminal acts" inside Yemen and abroad. The court acquitted five others of the 11-member group whose trial started Feb. 15. The suspects were also charged to have had planned to travel to Iraq to fight US-led forces. The charges against them included possession of arms and explosives and forging documents and passports. All 11 men were acquitted of another charge of setting up an armed group to carry out attacks in Yemen.
The list of the indicted includes : Mohammed Saleh al-Kazmi, 35, Abdullah Yahya al-Wadaee, 27, Mansur Nasser al-Bihani, 31, Shafeeq Ahmed Omar, 26, Saddam Hussein Ismail, 24, Fares Mohammed Al-Baraq, 27. "These were all proved guilty of forging Saudi, Yemeni and Iraqi passports. Ibrahim Mohammed al-Mukri, 43, Mohammed Ahmed Hatem, 30, Fares al-Nahdi, Fares Mohammed Ali, 27, Abdul Raoof Abdullah Naseeb, 30 and Ahmed Mohammed al-Kardai, 27. and Ismail al-Husami were all aquited.
Six of the 11 men were handed over to Yemen by Saudi Arabian authorities, as per a security agreement between the two countries. In the court chaired by judge Najeeb Qaderi, the chief prosecutor Saeed al-Akil charged the eight-member group, including an Iraqi and two Syrians, with forming an armed gang and planning attacks on Western interests in Yemen, including the British Embassy, Italian Embassy, the French Cultural Centre in Sanaa. Some of suspects told the court that they had planned to attack the British and Italian embassies and the French Cultural Center and that they received money and instructions from al-Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia while others denied some of the charges.
The suspects, including five Yemenis (Khaled al-Batati, Abdulrahman Basurah, Majed Buraik Mizan, Salah Mohammed Othman and Amran al-Faqih), Iraqi-born Swiss national Anwar Bayan Sadiq al-Gaylani and the two Syrian brothers Mohammed Abdulwahab Khait and Ahmad Abdulwahab Khait, were detained during recent months in a crackdown on terrorism by Yemeni authorities. The eight are among 13 suspected al-Qaeda members detained recently. Al-Akel said while reading the list of charges that five, including a woman were released, for lack of evidence. Police found hand grenades, military fatigues and documents showing sketches of the sites to be attacked.
The prosecution said Al Jailani lived in Kuwait and entered Yemen from Kenya in 2001 with a forged document. He also traveled to Switzerland and came back to Yemen from which he went to Saudi Arabia where he met somebody called al-Hizabr who authorized him to attack the British and Italian embassies and the French Cultural Center in 2003. But al-Jailani accused of leading al-Qaeda cell in Yemen and living in Marib where he met Abu Ali al-Harithi refused to say anything before the court except in the presence of defense lawyers. Al-Harithi who killed in 2002 by a US aircraft in the desert of Marib was accused of plotting the USS Cole terrorist operation in Aden in 2000. |
The suspected ringleader of an Al Qaeda cell on trial in Yemen for allegedly plotting attacks on Western targets in Gulf states on Monday retracted past confessions which he said were obtained by torture. His claims came as the trial reconvened of the eight suspected Al Qaeda militants, accused of being members of an organisation named Katab al-Tawhid and also charged with seeking to assassinate senior Yemeni officials. "I was forced under pressure and torture by political security (intelligence) to confess statements that were presented in previous hearings," 22-year-old Iraqi defendant Anwar al-Jilani told the court. But his request to be interrogated again was rejected by the court. State prosecutors presented evidence against the defendants that included explosives, as well as grenades, an automatic rifle, a personal computer and a camera. But Jilani, and the other suspects, including two Syrians, rejected the evidence. "I have nothing to do with all documents extracted from my personal computer as evidence," Jilani said.