SANAA, 8 August 2005 — A Yemeni criminal court yesterday opened the trial of four Iraqis accused of attempted attacks against the US and British Embassies in Sanaa in 2003 on the orders of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The representative of the public prosecutor, Khaled Al-Maouri, told the court that the four men had instructions to attack the US and British Embassies in the Yemeni capital if the US-led coalition attacked Iraq.
The four were identified as Ali Rashed Al-Saadi, Ahmad Salman Al-Zubaidi, Ahmad Muthana Al-Aani and Muhammad Mahdi Abdul Rahman.
Al-Zubaidi, Al-Aani and Abdul Rahman were apprehended by Yemeni security forces in a Sanaa apartment on April 26, 2003 — just one day before they were allegedly due to carry out the attacks, said Al-Maouri.
Al-Saadi, who had left the apartment moments before the raid, remains at large and was being prosecuted in absentia.
Al-Maouri said the four had arrived in Yemen at the end of 2002 as teachers, but were in fact intelligence officers with instructions to attack the US and British Embassies in case of a war against Saddam’s regime.
Al-Maouri presented documents allegedly proving that the four were intelligence agents and claimed that the Yemeni security forces had found 4.5 kg of TNT explosives in the apartment during the raid.
