SANAA, 29 July 2003 — Yemeni police have arrested four alleged members of a militant group blamed for last month’s attack on an army medical convoy, security officials said yesterday. The four were arrested in the southern province of Abyan, some 380 kilometers south of the capital Sanaa, where security forces are conducting an extensive hunt for fugitives who escaped a military sweep in the mountainous Hatat region of Abyan, the officials told Arab News.
The arrests, which took place in the past few days, brought to 31 the number of detained members of the group that authorities believe is linked to the June 21 attack on the medical convoy, in which seven medics were injured. Yemeni Army launched a major offensive on hideouts of the outlawed Aden-Abyan Islamic Army group in Hatat last month. Six suspects and one police officer were killed in the firefight. The leader of the fugitives, Khaled Abdul-Nabi, was among those killed. The officials gave no details on how the suspects were captured. Security forces are still searching for 28 members of the militant group, believed to be an offshoot of the Islamic Jihad movement.
Separately, Yemeni police have stepped up security around the German and US embassies here fearing a violent reaction to a German court’s ruling last week allowing extradition of two Yemeni terror suspects to the United States. Sheikh Mohammad Ali Hassan Al-Moayyad, a prominent cleric, and his assistant Mohammed Mussien Zaid, were arrested by German police at a Frankfurt hotel on Jan. 10 on a US warrant.
Streets around the two embassies were sealed off and police patrols were deployed in the vicinity of the two compounds for more protection.
The United States accuse Al-Moayyad of financing Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization and the Palestinian Hamas movement. The Sheikh is known as a fund-raiser for the Palestinians, but his alleged links with Al-Qaeda are not widely known in Yemen. Lawyers for Al-Moayyad and Zaid appealed Friday to Germany’s highest court against the ruling given on July 21 by the superior state court in Frankfurt, saying it was an infringement of international law.
The Yemeni government has since February maintained the charges against Al-Moayyad and his companion are unwarranted, and asked for their return. Yemeni officials say the senior cleric was lured to Germany by agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), ostensibly to receive donations for a charity he runs in Sanaa. A group of Yemeni lawmakers and legal specialists traveled to Berlin last week to protest against the men’s extradition to the United States and handed a petition to the German Parliament.
The US Embassy in Yemen on Saturday urged Americans living in the country to be extra vigilant after the German court’s approval of the two men’s extradition.
“In light of this judgment, American citizens in Yemen are reminded to pay particular attention to their personal security at all times,” the embassy said in a warden’s notice distributed to US citizens in the country.
