SANAA, 13 July 2006 — A Yemeni court of appeals began hearing yesterday an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal of 19 men, including five Saudis, charged with plotting to attack Americans in Yemen.

A state security court acquitted the men on Saturday citing lack of sufficient evidence.

When the trial began on Feb. 22, the men were charged with plotting to attack Americans in Yemen on orders from the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in a US airstrike.

Prosecutors have said the men planned to bomb sites frequented by Americans living in Yemen, including a five-star hotel in the southern port city of Aden. They said some of the defendants had fought alongside militants in Iraq and that they returned from Iraq after Zarqawi ordered them to carry out attacks in Yemen. The appeals court’s three-judge panel, headed by Judge Saeed Al-Qataa, accepted the prosecution’s appeal allowing state security prosecutors to present their arguments and evidence.

In his appeal statement, chief prosecutor Saeed Al-Aqil said that the acquittal of all the defendants had “undermined trust in justice.”

He asked the court to throw out the acquittal verdict and sentence the men to up to ten years in prison each.

During the trial, all the suspects maintained a not-guilty plea to the charge of forming an armed group and planning attacks against US citizens in Yemen or places frequented by them.

Six defendants, however, admitted to having fought US forces in Iraq.

The five Saudis, aged between 19 and 30, told the first instance court last February that they had been arrested as they arrived in Yemen in January 2005 in preparation for travel to Iraq to join insurgents there.

Meanwhile, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki told Arab News that the procedure in which the Saudi government would deal with the Saudis detained in Yemen would depend on the cases they are involved in and evidence.

Al-Turki said Saudi Arabia was working with Yemeni security to bring back the Saudis acquitted by the Yemeni court.

Al-Turki said that Saudi Arabia did not receive any of the Saudis detained in Yemen.

The five Saudis are Muhssein Mubarak ibn Ubaid, 19, Muhammad Falah Al-Qahtani, 22, Saad Abdul-Ghani Al-Bloushi, 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.

— With input from Saeed Al-Abyadh