SANAA, 28 May 2004 — Fourteen militants suspected of involvement in terror attacks in the past two years, including the 2002 bombing of a French oil supertanker, go on trial here tomorrow.

The 14 defendants are accused of belonging to a terror group involved in the attack on the French tanker Limburg off the Yemeni coast and firing at a chopper belonging to the US company Hunt Oil in Sanaa in November 2002, a judicial source told Arab News yesterday.

The Limburg was attacked by a small boat loaded with explosives in the southeastern Yemeni oil exporting harbor of Al-Dhabba. A Bulgarian crewmember was killed in the attack.

They are also accused of masterminding bombings near official buildings and homes of security and intelligence staff in 2002 and planning for attacks on Western embassies in Sanaa, said the source on condition of anonymity.

Twelve other militants charged with bombing the US destroyer USS Cole in Aden port in October 2000 will go on trial two weeks later. “Public Prosecution is still investigating 12 people in the USS Cole case,” the source said.

The Cole was rammed by a small explosives-laden boat as it was refueling in the harbor on Oct. 12, 2000. Seventeen US sailors were killed in the attack.

Yemen has been delaying the trial of the Cole suspects since Oct. 2003 on a US request for more time to investigate.

The source said among the 12 two were being charged with masterminding the attack: Jamal Muhammad Al-Badawi and Fahd Al-Qasei. The Cole trial will be attended by officials from the US Department of Justice.

Yemen has allied itself with the United States in the war against terrorism, and the country has been launching a wide-scale chase after Al-Qaeda members since the terror attacks on Washington and New York in September 2001.

Border Demarcation Completed

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have completed the demarcation of their 1,845-kilometer border after installing 824 markers along the frontier, the head of Yemen’s Technical Border Bureau said in remarks published yesterday

Dhaifullah Shumaila told a website run by the Yemeni Defense Ministry the German firm Hansa Luftbild installed the final marker on the line under the July 2000 Jeddah border treaty.

He said by setting up the last mark, “the field work of the demarcation is complete.” The company is expected to draw up border maps by June next year, the Yemeni official said.

Political and economic ties between the Kingdom and Yemen have been developing since the two countries signed the Jeddah treaty that ended a 66-year-old dispute over the border.

Riyadh and Sanaa are working closely to combat cross-border drug and arms smuggling and infiltration of terrorists. Large quantities of arms and explosives are smuggled through the porous borders from Yemen every year.