SANAA: A Yemeni court yesterday sentenced three Al-Qaeda suspects to seven years in prison and a fourth to two years in jail for plotting attacks against government installations and Westerners in the capital Sanaa.
Judge Muhssien Alwan said the court found the four men guilty of forming an armed group and plotting attacks on hotels frequented by Westerners in Sanaa. He said the plot also included targeting state installations in the city.
Prosecutors said the men had planned attacks to avenge the killing of leading Al-Qaeda member in Yemen, Hamza Al-Quaiti, who was shot dead in a police raid in Hadhramout last August.
Essam Muhammed Ghailan 24, Munir Hamoud Al-Bawni, 23, Muhammed Muhssien Al-Saadi, 24, received a seven-year jail term each. Al-Saadi’s younger brother Osama, 15, was sentenced to two years in prison for resisting police arrest. The defendants told the court they would not appeal the verdict, saying the trial was illegal.
“This trial is illegal, this verdict is unjust,” Muhammed Al-Saadi shouted from behind the screen bars after the court verdict was pronounced. The ruling said the four suspects set up the terror cell and collected weapons and ammunition to be used in attacks.
Meanwhile, six African migrants drowned and 11 were reported missing and presumed dead after traffickers forced passengers overboard a boat in deep water off Yemen's southeastern coast, the United Nations refugee agency reported yesterday.
The boat was carrying 52 passengers — 40 Somalis and 12 Ethiopians — across the Gulf of Aden, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. Yemeni authorities recovered six bodies near Huseysa, about 500 km east of the southern port city of Aden, according to the statement.
The boat was one of seven boats carrying migrants that reached the Yemeni coast on Friday after making the perilous voyage from the Horn of Africa.
Survivors reported that the boat departed on Thursday from Suweto, in northern Somalia’s Bossasso region.
When the smugglers noticed the presence of Yemeni police onshore, they refused to get closer to the coast and forced passengers overboard in deep water, the UN agency said. Initial reports said 35 people reached shore near Huseysa, it added.
More than 50,000 migrants, the vast majority of them Somalis, resorted to traffickers for the treacherous sea crossing between Somalia and Yemen in 2008.
At least 590 people drowned and another 359 were reported missing last year as result of crossings gone wrong, often with traffickers forcing the migrants overboard, UNHCR said.
Judge suspended
A judge who approved a slavery contract was suspended from work. An official said Judge Hadi Abu Asag was also ordered to attend a disciplinary hearing.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
The investigation into Abu Asag came after a human rights group accused the judge of approving the sale of a 26-year-old man named “slave Qannaf” last year.
The contract for the sale had the signatures of the judge and several other court officials.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. Its constitution bans slavery, but there have been reports the practice continues in the remote hinterland.
— Input from agencies
