SANAA, 8 July 2004 — A Yemeni counterterrorism court yesterday began hearings into the October 2000 bombing of the US Navy destroyer USS Cole off Yemen, with six suspects charged with planning the attack.
The destroyer was rammed by an explosives-laden boat shortly after entering the southern Yemen harbor of Aden for refueling on Oct. 12, 2000. Seventeen sailors aboard the vessel were killed and 33 others injured.
Five defendants appeared before the court, while the alleged mastermind of the attack Abdul-Raheem Al-Nashri, alias Mulla Bilal, who is in US custody, is being tried in absentia.
Al-Nashri, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in November 2002 and handed over to US authorities. He was described at the time as Al-Qaeda’s chief of operations in the Gulf. Among the suspects present in court were three key suspects in the attack — Jamal Muhammad Al-Badawi, alias Abu Abdurrahman, 39, Fahd Muhammad Al-Qasaa, also known as Abu-Houdhifa, 30, and Maamoun Ahmad Onswa, alias Mu’taz, 30.
The two others are police officers Ali Muhammad Al-Muraqib, 30, and Murad Salih Al-Sorwri, 27. They were charged with providing the other suspects with forged ID documents.
According to the bill of indictments read out by the court’s chief judge Najeeb Al-Qaderi, the six men were charged with “forming an armed band to carry out terrorist acts, endangering state security and society’s stability, and harming the country’s highest interests.”
Conviction on those charges would carry sentences ranging from ten years in prison to execution. The five defendants, dressed in blue prison suits, refused to enter pleas until they appointed lawyers.
