SANAA, 30 May 2004 — Fourteen terror suspects appeared in a Sanaa court amid tight security yesterday in the first trial of militants charged with terror attacks in Yemen.
The charges include involvement in an attack in October 2002 on the French oil supertanker Limburg and a plot to assassinate the US ambassador.
Armored vehicles blocked streets leading to the court and anti-terror troops were stationed on adjacent buildings as the trial got under way.
A major part of the hearing was taken up with a reading of the indictment covering the four main cases. Five of the defendants were charged with involvement in the Limburg bombing.
Omar Hassan Jarallah, 26, Fawzi Yahya Al-Hababi, 26, Muhammad Saeed Al-Ammari, 25, and Fawzi Muhammad Abdul-Qawi, 24, appeared in court. A fifth, Yassir Ali Salim, 27, is being tried in absentia.
According to the prosecution, the five bought a small boat and loaded it with more than 1,200 kilograms of TNT and C-4 explosives. The boat attacked the tanker as it entered the Al-Dhabba oil exporting harbor on the Arabian Sea. One Bulgarian crew member was killed.
Prosecution said two suicide attackers, Haitham Al-Hadhrami and Houssien Al-Badawi rammed the boat into the tanker.
Al-Hababi and Al-Ammari were charged besides eight other defendants with attacking a helicopter belonging to the US company Hunt Oil after take-off from Sanaa International Airport in March 2003.
The other eight were Fawaz Yahya Al-Rabyee, 27, Abu-Bakr Yahya Al-Rabyee, 26, Hizam Saleh Megalli, 26, Ibrahim Muhammad Abdul-Jabbar, 25, Muhammad Abdullah Al-Dailami, 24, Salim Muhammad Al-Dailami, 23, Abdul-Ghani Qaifan, 27, and Qassim Yahya Al-Raimi, 25.
Fawaz Al-Rabyee and his younger brother Abu-Bakr are accused of masterminding bombings near Political Security Organization (intelligence) buildings and homes of three top intelligence officials in 2003. No one was hurt in the attacks.
Nine of the defendants are charged with planning suicide bomb attacks on the embassies of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Cuba in Sanaa, and plotting to assassinate US Ambassador Edmund J. Hull. The attacks never happened.
Reading the bill of indictment, Prosecutor Saeed Al-Aqil accused the 14 defendants of “forming an armed gang in preparation for a criminal project aimed at endangering society’s security.” As he began reading the indictments, the defendants shouted “Allahu Akbar” — God Is Great. Dressed in prison blue suits, most of the defendants had thick beards and long hair.
After the three-hour hearing, which was attended by representatives of the US Department of Justice, Chief Judge Ahmad Al-Jurmozi adjourned the trial until Tuesday, backing a plea from the defendants for additional time to hire lawyers.
