SANAA, 9 July 2006 — A Yemeni state security court yesterday acquitted 19 men, including five Saudis, of plotting bomb attacks against Americans in Yemen, citing lack of sufficient evidence.
“The prosecution failed to provide sufficient evidence that the five Saudis and 14 Yemenis were part of an armed group planning attacks against Americans in Yemen or those who deal with them,” said presiding Judge Mohammed Al-Baadani in his verdict.
When the trial began Feb. 22, the men were charged with planning to attack US citizens in Yemen on orders from the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US airstrike on an Al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq last month.
Prosecutors said the men had planned to bomb locations frequented by Americans living in Yemen, including a five-star hotel in the southern port city of Aden.
They said some of defendants had fought alongside militants in Iraq and that they returned from Iraq after Zarqawi gave them orders to carry out attacks in Yemen.
All the defendants pleaded not guilty to the charge of planning to target US citizens in Yemen, but six admitted to having fought US forces in Iraq.
The five Saudis are Muhssein Mubarak ibn Ubaid, 19, Muhammad Falah Al-Qahtani, 22, Saad Abdul-Ghani Al-Baloushi, 26, Muhammad Musaifir Al-Quraishi, 27, and Majid Ahmad Al-Zahrani, 30.
They told the court that they had been arrested as they arrived in Yemen in January 2005 on their way to Iraq to join insurgents there.
Reading out the verdict, the chief judge said the men “should not have been prosecuted for their intention to go for Jihad (holy war).”
He added that the men were either outside Yemen or being detained in the country during 2004 and 2005 and, therefore, could not have jointly planned attacks.
Prosecutor Khaled Al-Mawri rejected the verdict and said the prosecution would appeal it.
