SANAA, 23 January 2005 — Yemen will soon put on trial 826 extremists, including 26 suspected members of the Al-Qaeda terror network, a judicial source said Friday.
The trials, to start after the festivities of Eid Al-Adha, will involve “26 suspected Al-Qaeda members, including two extradited by Saudi Arabia and one by Kuwait late last year,” the source told AFP, requesting anonymity.
The suspects “have links with those accused of bombing the (French supertanker) Limburg (in October 2002) and with other terrorist attacks which took place in Yemen over the past two years,” the source said.
The 800 other suspects, who will be tried “in batches,” are members of the Faithful Youth organization which was headed by a Yemeni rebel preacher killed by the army last September, according to the same source.
The Yemeni government announced last September that the army had killed Sheikh Hussein Badr Eddin Al-Huthi, nearly three months after he started a rebellion in the country’s mountainous northwest, near the border with Saudi Arabia, triggering clashes which left more than 400 people dead.
