SANAA, 5 March 2007 — A Yemeni court yesterday charged 36 suspected members of Al-Qaeda with plotting bomb attacks against oil facilities and places frequented by Americans and Yemeni businessmen.
In the charges sheet, read out by chief prosecutor Sayeed Al-Aqel, the men were accused of “taking part in forming an armed band to carry out sabotage and criminal acts and to attack foreigners living in Yemen.”
He told the court the men had prepared explosives and were in the possession of firearms, vehicles and masks for use in the attacks.
Only two of the attacks, allegedly planned by the group, took place when four suicide attackers drove four cars loaded with explosives into two oil facilities in eastern Yemen last September.
The four pick-up trucks detonated inside the two facilities in the southeastern province of Hadhramout and the northeastern province of Marib. The four attackers and a security guard were killed. The Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen later claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Prosecutors said the 36 defendants had provided the attackers with logistic support. They said the suspects were also involved in planning bomb attacks in mid-2006 against a hotel in Sanaa frequented by foreigners and a compound housing American diplomats as well as the building of the Yemeni Chamber of Commerce.
Additionally, the defendants face charges of sheltering 10 of the 23 Al-Qaeda operatives who escaped from a high-security prison in Sanaa in February 2006.
The 30 defendants present in the court included a bodyguard of Faisal Bin-Shamlan, an opposition candidate in September’s presidential elections.
Hussein Al-Dharhani, whose arrest two days before the day of voting was blasted by opposition leaders as a political ploy, was charged with giving shelter to four of the suspects.
All the defendants pleaded not guilty and 10 of them said they had made confessions under duress during interrogation.
Bandar Abdul-Kareem Al-Ghumaisi, 26, told the court’s presiding judge that he was tortured at the building of the intelligence services in the central province of Ibb where he was arrested.
