WASHINGTON, 16 May 2003 — Two men were charged yesterday as Al-Qaeda members with helping plan the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in 2000, with court papers revealing new details about one of the deadliest terror strikes against the US military.
Both Fahd Al-Quso and Jamal Ahmad Muhammad Ali Al-Badawi were charged with 50 counts of various terrorism offenses, including the murders of US nationals and US military personnel. If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
They were among 10 suspects who escaped last month from a jail in Yemen. They remain at large.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose son is in the US Navy, called the attack on the Cole “still a fresh wound.” He said both were longtime Al-Qaeda operatives.
Ashcroft described the men as “trained in Al-Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s, schooled in Osama Bin Laden’s hate and vowed to attack Americans whenever and wherever they could, especially American nationals on the Arabian Peninsula.”
Al-Quso planned to videotape the deadly attack from an apartment in the hills overlooking the Yemeni port city Aden, the indictment said. It was unclear whether such a videotape ever was made.
Ashcroft said Al-Quso “hoped to videotape the attack to encourage other would-be terrorists to engage in similar attacks.”
The indictments, unsealed yesterday in US District Court in New York, also allege that Al-Badawi plotted to attack The Sullivans, another US Navy ship that had stopped in January 2000 to refuel in Aden.
That attack failed because a small boat loaded with explosives sank under weight, the indictment said. But the terrorists were able to salvage the explosives and eventually use them in the attack on the USS Cole roughly 10 months later.
