SANAA, 27 July 2004 — Yemen yesterday denied a US report that Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden made contact with a Yemeni official in 1999 to release an Al-Qaeda member.
A commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States said in a report released on Friday that Bin Laden had personally intervened with a Yemeni government official in 1999.
“No Yemeni official had received a phone call from Osama Bin Laden or any other Al-Qaeda leader at that time, nor earlier or later,” an official source said in a statement posted on the Yemeni Defense Ministry’s website.
The Sept. 11 commission said that Al-Qaeda operative Tawfiq ibn Attash, also known as Khaled ibn Attash, was arrested in early 1999 with another suspect wanted by the Yemeni government.
The report said Bin Laden used a threatening tone while speaking with the Yemeni official about the release of the suspect. Bin Attash was set free to be arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in April 2003 and handed over to US officials.
According to the Yemeni official source reports about the phone conversation included “incorrect information that lacked accuracy and objectivity and is far from being true”.
The Sept. 11 commission did not give the name of the Yemeni official who allegedly received Bin Laden’s call, but US officials have said that a top Yemeni military official had relations with some Al-Qaeda operatives in the country and that he was suspected to have links to the bombing of the USS Cole, allegations Yemeni authorities vehemently denied.
Yemen, an impoverished country located on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is a key US-ally in the “war on terror”.
On the behest of Washington, Yemen has rounded up of hundreds of suspected Al-Qaeda members.
On July 7, a Yemeni counterterrorism court began the trial of six Yemenis charged with the attack on the USS Cole off Yemen in October 2000.
Seventeen sailors were killed and 33 injured when two suicide bombers rammed a dinghy laden with more than 200 kilograms of explosives into the US Navy ship as it stopped at the southern Yemeni port of Aden for refueling.
