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U.S. Frustrated By Elusive Justice Served to USS Cole Plotters May 04, 2008 It's been called "the forgotten attack" but it's one of the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history. Eight years after the USS Cole was attacked by a motorboat packed with explosives, all of the six men convicted of the strike have escaped from prison, or been freed by Yemeni officials. Seventeen sailors were killed and 40 more wounded in the strike, blamed on Usama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Jamal al-Badawi, who helped organize the Cole plot, has reportedly escaped from Yemeni prisons twice. He is supposedly...

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - An Al-Qaida terror cell was behind a mortar strike against the U.S. embassy in Yemen that missed its target but killed a security guard and wounded 13 students at a nearby school, an Interior Ministry official said Saturday. The official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said al- Qaida militant Hamza al-Dayan launched three mortars at the embassy Tuesday before fleeing the scene in a vehicle with three accomplices. The mortar shells crashed into the school in the downtown Sawan district of San'a, killing the security guard and wounding 13 schoolgirls, three grievously. On Thursday, the...

A Yemeni court on Wednesday sentenced 30 Yemenis to between two and 15 years in prison for planning and carrying out attacks for Al-Qaeda. The convicts, part of a group of 36 accused of being members of of Al-Qaeda network, launched an attack in September 2006 on an oil refinery at Marib, 170 kilometres east of the capital Sanaa. Petrol storage tanks at a terminal operated by the Canadian firm Nexen in southeastern Hadramut province were also targeted. According to AFP, four of the suspects were acquitted while the court ordered the release of two others on time already served...

Program sets al-Qaeda convicts free on their honor By Kathy Gannon ASSOCIATED PRESS July 5, 2007 SAN'A, Yemen – Yemen is pioneering a novel approach for dealing with convicted al-Qaeda operatives: Let them roam free as long as they promise to be law-abiding. For example, Ali Mohammed al-Kurdi says he sent two suicide bombers to Iraq and trained others. He was sentenced to death for his part in a hotel bombing in Yemen's port city of Aden, escaped and was rearrested. Fawzi al-Wajeh, a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden's, was convicted in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker...

Car bomb kills at least 8 at ancient temple site in northeast Yemen SAN'A, Yemen: A car bomb exploded at the site of an ancient temple in Yemen's northeast province of Mareb on Monday, killing eight people and wounding at least seven, police said. Police in Mareb said six of the people killed were tourists, believed to be mostly from Spain. The other two were Yemenis, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Authorities in the province said the blast was caused by a car bomb,

SANAA - Yemen’s state security court on Saturday acquitted 19 suspected Al Qaeda militants, including five Saudis, of plotting to attack Americans in the country. The presiding judge Mohammed al-Baadani ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove its case that the men had formed an armed gang to attack American citizens in Yemen. When the trial began on February 22, the men were charged with planning to attack US citizens in Yemen on orders from the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike on an Al Qaeda safe...

U.S. Navy ships are patrolling the coast of Yemen as part of a multinational coalition trying to find and recapture 23 terrorists who escaped from an underground prison last Friday. Navy officials would not say how many or what types of ships were participating in the operation. The patrols began Thursday, nearly a week after the escape which included an al-Qaida operative sentenced to death for plotting the USS Cole bombing in 2000. The U.S. ships are part of a Dutch-led task force of ships from different countries that routinely patrols the international waters of the Gulf of Oman, the...

SAN`A, Yemen - A suspected al-Qaida ally was executed by a Yemeni firing squad Sunday after being convicted of killing a prominent politician and plotting a deadly attack on three American missionaries in 2002. Ali al-Jarallah was blindfolded and shot in the courtyard of the central prison in the capital, San`a, in the presence of judiciary officials, several reporters and the victim's lawyer. Al-Jarallah was convicted in 2003 of helping plot the attack that killed three missionaries in a Yemeni hospital. He also was convicted of murdering Jarallah Omar, the Yemeni Socialist Party's deputy secretary-general, a few days earlier, and...

A Yemeni cleric who claimed to have ties with Osama Bin Laden has been sentenced to 75 years in prison in New York. Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad was convicted on charges of conspiring to support the al-Qaeda network and Palestinian militant group Hamas. At a meeting with two FBI informants in Germany, he was recorded promising to funnel more than $2m (£1.1m) to Hamas. He was arrested by German police in January 2003 and extradited to the US. For each of five counts, Moayad received 15-year sentences, each to be served consecutively. He was also fined $1.25m in a...

Algiers, 21 June (AKI) - The Algerian authorities have arrested six Yemeni students they suspect of belonging to al-Qaeda and of having formed an al-Qaeda cell in the city of Annaba, eastern Algeria, the al-Khabar daily reported. The arrests, which security forces made over the past few days, followed phone taps of calls the men made on their line to Peshawar in Pakistan, as well as to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

LONDON - Yemen’s former ambassador to Syria, Ahmed Abdullah al-Hassani, alleged Wednesday that Al Qaeda cells within the Yemeni military and security forces planned the 2000 bombing of the US warship Cole. Hassani, who said he has applied for political asylum in Britain, also told a press conference in London that “it is very likely the head of the regime (President Ali Abdullah Saleh) knew in advance of the Cole explosion.” However, Hassani provided no evidence to support his claims and said he had not been in contact with US officials investigating the bombing since leaving Damascus to travel to...

Saudi security forces have killed 10 suspected Al Qaeda militants in two days of clashes in the capital, including a Yemeni thought to be the terror group's leader in the country. The clashes, in which two people on the country's most-wanted list were also killed, occurred before and after two car bombings against security targets in the capital on Wednesday that left two other people dead. Saudi forces killed seven militants late on Wednesday that came just an hour after bombings at the Interior Ministry and a special forces base, a ministry statement said. The other three were killed in...

RIYADH (AFP) - A Yemeni considered to be closely linked to terror chief Osama bin Laden was one of seven militants killed in Wednesday's shootout with Saudi security forces in Riyadh, a security source told AFP. "Ibrahim Ahmad Abdel Majeed al-Reemy, a Yemeni national, was among the seven militants killed on Wednesday evening," the source said Reemy, who does not figure on the Saudi kingdom's most-wanted list, is a "big shot in Al-Qaeda and is believed to be the link between the organisation in Saudi Arabia and bin Laden himself," the source said. Wednesday's shootout took place after two car...

SAN`A, Yemen — Yemeni authorities have released 113 militants belonging to the Al Qaeda network — including at least five once accused of involvement in the deadly bombing of the USS Cole — after they recanted their extremist views, security officials said Thursday. The militants once accused in the USS Cole bombing were later cleared. The 15 Yemeni militants convicted in August of involvement in the 2000 bombing, which killed 17 U.S. sailors, were not released. The 113 men were released during the past two weeks after signing pledges not to carry out terror acts or criminal activities. LoL!!! Full...

SAN'A, Yemen - A Yemeni judge sentenced two men to death and four others to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years Wednesday for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole (news - web sites), an attack blamed on Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terror network. Saudi-born Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location, and Jamal al-Badawi, a 35-year-old Yemeni, were both sentenced to death for plotting, preparing and involvement in the bombing, which killed 17 U.S. sailors as their destroyer refueled in the southern Yemeni port of Aden. Al-Nashiri,...

BEIRUT, LEBANON - Could Yemen follow on the heels of Afghanistan and Iraq as the third major venue in the war on terrorism? A bloody Islamist insurrection in the mountainous north which has cost more than 200 lives and a statement from an Al Qaeda group vowing to turn Yemen into a "quagmire" for the US would suggest that the remote country at the tip of the Arabian peninsula is gearing up for conflict. But instead of an Al Qaeda campaign against the US and the Yemeni government, a conflict in Yemen may involve a power struggle between militant Sunnis...

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) --A Yemeni security court on Wednesday charged six Yemenis in the planning of the October, 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and said they belonged to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Seventeen American sailors were killed when two suicide bombers in an explosives-laden boat rammed the USS Cole as it refueled in the southern port city of Aden. The bombing was blamed on bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. Among the six charged in San'a Wednesday was accused mastermind Abdel Rahim al-Nasheri, said to be in U.S. custody, but it was unclear where. The other five were...

Since Yemen joined the international community to fight terrorism soon after the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, the Yemeni government has had an impressive record. Security forces have captured key Al-Qaeda members, have rounded up hundreds of suspects and have arrested those allegedly involved in the bombings of the USS Cole in 2000 and the French tanker Limburg two years later. Early this month, Yemen celebrated receiving seven gunboats from the United States to enhance the security of Yemeni ports and its coastline. But the Yemeni government also has an alternative approach to fighting terrorism. The...

SANAA, March 19 (Reuters) - Yemen has recaptured two suspected militants thought to be the masterminds behind the 2000 bomb attack that killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole in the port of Aden, security sources said on Friday. Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd al-Qusaa were the last of 10 men rearrested by Yemeni police since escaping from jail in 2003. They are all suspected of links to Osama bin laden's al Qaeda network and most are accused of involvement in the Cole attack. The sources said Badawi and Qusaa were arrested on Thursday night but declined to give more details....

<p>SAN`A, Yemen (AP) - Nine suspects in the 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole have been arrested, the government said Tuesday, including eight who escaped from jail last year.</p> <p>Interior Minister Rashad al-Eleimi said authorities were closing in on two suspects still at large following their April jail break in the southern port city of Aden, a major embarrassment to the Yemeni government. The bombing in Aden killed 17 U.S. sailors and has been blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.</p>