SANAA, 22 March 2004 — The Sanaa government yesterday demanded that the United States immediately free the imam of the capital’s grand mosque and his bodyguard who have been detained in the United States on charges of funneling funds to the Al-Qaeda terror network.
Washington had committed a “serious mistake” and brought charges against imam Mohammed Ali Al-Moayad and Mohammad Mohsen Yahya Zayed “without any proof”, a government official told the official SABA news agency.
The official deplored “the obstinacy of the American authorities in persisting in their error.”
The pair, who were caught in a sting operation in Germany, appeared for a preliminary hearing in a district court in Brooklyn, New York, in November on charges of conspiring to provide material support to Al-Qaeda and the dominant Palestinian group Hamas.
They were arrested by Germany’s crime fighting group Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) in January, 2003, in Frankfurt. The arrest was made at the request of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Moayad is said to have been a finance chief for Al-Qaeda and Hamas, which is branded a terrorist organization by the United States, supplying both organizations with weapons and communications equipment.
He has also been linked to the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 crew and injured 38.
Zayed was charged as an accomplice.
The authorities in Yemen have repeatedly demanded that they be returned to Sanaa.
Washington has also branded another senior Yemeni figure a terrorist, prompting Yemen to demand proof of accusations against Abdul Majid Zendani, the head of the central committee of Yemen’s leading opposition party Al-Islah.
