SANAA, 4 December 2006 — Yemeni authorities have released two Australians arrested along with six other foreigners in Sanaa in October over suspected links to Al-Qaeda and alleged involvement in smuggling weapons to Somalia, a security source said yesterday.
The source told Arab News brothers, Mohammad, 21, and Abdullah Abdul Raheem Ayub, 19, were freed late Saturday “after prosecutors found no evidence linking them with any illegal activity in Yemen.”
He said a third Australian suspect, Marek Samulski, 35, was still under custody and that he would likely face trial before a state security court that handles terror-related cases in Yemen.
The trio and five other foreigners — a Briton, a German, an Austrian, a Dane and a Somali — were captured in a sting operation by anti-terrorism police in Sanaa on Oct. 16, and security officials said at the time the men were members of a group with links to the Al-Qaeda network and that they were trying to smuggle weapons to Somalia.
The German suspect, whose name was not made public, was freed in early November after investigations established that the man was not involved in the weapons-smuggling activities.
Dane Kenneth Sorenson, Briton Rashid Laskar and an Austrian and a Somali, whose identities were not given, are awaiting trial, said the security source.
Interior Ministry officials have said the seven Westerners have been learning Arabic at a Sanaa language school for the past two years before they were arrested.
Meanwhile, 22 suspected members of Al-Qaeda accused of plotting attacks on Western targets in Yemen are being questioned by a special anti-terrorist tribunal.
“These elements form a dangerous terrorist cell. They were recruited by Fawaz Al-Rabihi,” a fugitive killed by security forces in October, the Defense Ministry’s website said quoting a security source.
Rabihi was condemned to death in 2004 in absentia for planning a bomb attack on the French tanker, the Limburg, in 2002 off the coast of southeast Yemen.
The security source said the arrested suspects were linked to an aborted twin attack on Sept. 15 on oil facilities in east Yemen.
They also stand accused of planning attacks against “foreign and local installations and foreign residents in Yemen”, according to the source.
The Al-Qaeda arm in Yemen has claimed responsibility for the September attacks and threatened to launch new attacks against US targets in the country. The group said in an Internet statement that “those operations were only the first spark, and what is coming shall be harsher and more bitter.”
