SANAA, 6 February 2006 — Yemen issued arrest warrants yesterday for 23 Al-Qaeda operatives who escaped from a Sanaa prison on Friday. Yemen has asked the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to help trace and arrest them, a senior police official said.
The official, who asked for anonymity, told Arab News the arrest notices were sent to the Interpol’s headquarters in France and would be circulated to countries in the region in case the fugitives leave Yemeni territory.
“The search is now concentrated inside the country,” said the official, adding that, “We issued international arrest notices in case they managed to flee the country.”
The 23 fugitives, including 13 Al-Qaeda operatives convicted in the 2000 bombing of the US destroyer USS Cole and the 2002 attack on the French oil tanker Limburg off Yemen, escaped late Friday from a jail at intelligence headquarters in the southern Sanaa suburb of Hadda.
“Interpol will issue notices with names and photographs of the escapees and circulate them through its data network to regional bureaus and member countries to trace them,” he said.
The prisoners fled through a 70-meter-long underground tunnel they managed to dig. The tunnel linked their cells to a mosque on a nearby street.
Official sources have said that the second main convict in the USS Cole bombing, Jamal Al-Badawi, was among the escapees. Al-Badawi had been serving a 15-year jail term. Four other convicts in the attack serving jail terms from four to 10 years also fled the prison.
Also among the fugitives was Fawaz Al-Rabyee, whom a state security court sentenced to death in August 2004 after convicting him of leading a 14-member group linked to the terrorist Al-Qaeda network.
