SANAA, 5 February 2006 — Thirteen Al-Qaeda members convicted in the 2000 bombing of a US destroyer and the 2002 attack on a French oil tanker off Yemen were among 23 prisoners who escaped from a high-security prison in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, a state-run website reported yesterday.
Quoting well-informed sources, the Defense Ministry website said the second main convict in the attack on the USS Cole, Jamal Al-Badawi, was among the escapees. Badawi had been serving a 15-year jail term.
Four other convicts in the attack serving jail terms from four to 10 years also fled the prison, the report said.
Security sources told Arab News that the fugitives escaped late Friday from a jail at intelligence headquarters in the southern Sanaa suburb of Hadda.
Also among the fugitives was Fawaz Al-Rabyee, whom a state security court sentenced to death in August 2004 after convicting him of leading a 14-member group linked to the terrorist Al-Qaeda network.
Rabyee, who is wanted by US authorities over suspected links to Osama Bin Laden, was found guilty in a spate of attacks including the October 2002 bombing of the French oil supertanker Limburg off the southeastern Yemeni coasts. The report said the prisoners fled through a 70-meter underground tunnel they managed to dig. The tunnel linked their cells to a mosque on a nearby street.
Interior Ministry officials said an investigation had been launched to find out whether the escapees received help from inside or outside the facility. They said a massive manhunt is under way, and that the fugitives’ photographs had been distributed to all police stations and intelligence agents in Sanaa.
Meanwhile, 14 Yemenis appeared before a state security court in Sanaa yesterday charged with planning to launch bomb attacks against Americans in Yemen. The men were arrested in June 2005.
Presiding judge Muhammad Al-Ba’adani adjourned the trial until Feb. 11.
