SANAA, 20 June 2004 — Lawyers defending 14 terror suspects protested yesterday after a court in Sanaa decided to continue with the trial without giving the lawyers full access to their clients’ files.
Fourteen lawyers attended the fifth hearing at the anti-terrorism court in Sanaa, but refused to make their pleas until the court responded to their requests.
They told the court that meeting their demand for a copy of the files and records related to the case was a prerequisite for continuing their work.
The lawyers were furious when the chief judge Muhammad Al-Jurmozi ruled that the defense teams could check the files only at the court and were not permitted to take a copy away with them.
“This is not a fair trial. This is a military trial and illegal secrecy,” shouted Muhammad Naji Allaw, head of the defense team.
The 14 suspects are being tried over alleged involvement in terrorist attacks, including an October 2002 bombing of a French oil supertanker off Yemen’s southeastern coast.
The trial began on May 29 with four of the defendants accused of planning and carrying out the attack on the French supertanker Limburg. A fifth suspect in the attack is being tried in absentia. According to the bill of indictments, the five bought a small boat and loaded it with more than 1,200 kilograms of TNT and 20 kilograms of C-4 explosives.
The court adjourned the trial until June 26 for reviewing a cache of weapons and explosives allegedly seized with the suspects.
Three Killed in Tribal Clash
Three people were killed and two wounded yesterday in a firefight between rival tribes in the northeast of Yemen, tribal sources said.
They said tribesmen of the Magzar clan in the eastern province of Maarib ambushed men from the rival Al-Ghail tribe of the neighboring Al-Jawf province, with whom the Magzaris have a running vendetta.
The firefight, in which the two sides used automatic weapons, took place on a highway linking the two provinces.
