Interpol Issues Urgent Global Security Alert After Al Qaeda Prisoners Escape

Enoch · Feb 6, 2006

USA Today

Cole mastermind escapes from Yemen prison
SAN'A, Yemen (AP) — An al-Qaeda operative sentenced to death for plotting the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in 2000 was among a group of convicts who escaped from a Yemen prison last week, Interpol said Sunday in issuing a global security alert.

Officials set up checkpoints around the capital of San'a, where the prison was located, to try to catch the escapees before they could flee to the protection of mountain tribes, according to a Yemeni security official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Some mountainous tribal areas are essentially outside the control of Yemen's central government, raising fears the fugitives could hide there before escaping the country.

The Yemeni government made no official comment Sunday.

Yemeni officials said Jamal al-Badawi — a man convicted of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the Cole bombing — was among the fugitives, Interpol said. Al-Badawi was among those sentenced to death in September 2004 for plotting the attack, in which two suicide bombers blew up an explosives-laden boat next to the destroyer as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.

A Yemeni security official announced the escape of convicted al-Qaeda members Friday but did not provide any details or names. The official said only that the escapees had all had been sentenced last year on terrorism-related charges.

Interpol said in a statement that at least 13 of the 23 escapees were convicted al-Qaeda fighters.

The convicts escaped via a 140-yard-long tunnel "dug by the prisoners and coconspirators outside," Interpol said. The Yemeni official said the prison was at the central headquarters of the country's military intelligence services in a building in the center of the capital.

Another of the 23 escapees was identified as Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeiee, considered by Interpol to be one of those responsible for a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast. That attack killed a Bulgarian crewmember and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

Al-Rabeiee also was convicted for an attack on a helicopter carrying Hunt Oil Co. employees a month later and the detonation of explosions at a civil aviation authority building.

"We are closely monitoring the situation at this time and we will work with our domestic and international partners to actively pursue these dangerous terrorists," FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said in Washington.

Interpol's urgent global security alert, known as an "orange notice," was issued "because the escape and unknown whereabouts of al-Qaeda terrorists constituted a clear and present danger to all countries," the statement said.

Secretary General Ronald Noble urged Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, to provide names, photographs, fingerprints and other information about the suspects.

He called on the agency's 184 member states "to take all relevant precautionary measures both at and inside their borders" and to help Yemen locate and capture the fugitives.

Noble also said that unless the fugitives were tracked down, they possibly "will be able to travel internationally, to elude detection and to engage in future terrorist activity."

The escape came a day before the expected start of a trial of 15 people charged with involvement in terror operations in Yemen, including Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, another suspected plotter of the Cole and Limburg bombings.

The trial was postponed indefinitely.

Yemen was long a haven for Islamic militants. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the government aligned itself with the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But many diplomats and outside experts have raised questions about Yemen's cooperation and inability to control tribal areas.
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Enoch · Feb 10, 2006

U.S. Navy Ships Block Yemen Coast in Hunt for Terrorists

Fox News

WASHINGTON — The White House expressed "enormous concern" Thursday about the threat posed by 23 escaped terrorists as U.S. Navy ships patrolled the coast of Yemen in a multinational effort to recapture them.

Meanwhile, a Yemeni official said authorities had detained prison staff members suspected of passing information and tools to help prisoners escape.

Navy officials would not say how many or what types of ships were helping in the operation to find the fugitives, convicted members of Al Qaeda who tunneled out of a cell in a Yemeni prison.

The patrols began Thursday, nearly a week after the escape that included an Al Qaeda operative sentenced to death for plotting the USS Cole bombing in 2000.

The Bush administration has spoken with Yemeni officials, through the U.S. ambassador, to express disappointment that the prisoners were housed together and that restrictions in the prison were not more stringent.

"I find the developments in Yemen not only deeply disappointing, but of enormous concern to us, especially given the capabilities and the expertise of the people who were there," Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to President Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism, told reporters Thursday in a conference call following Bush's speech here on terrorism.

She said the United States also was working with Saudi Arabia because that nation had turned a number of individuals back to Yemen who have now escaped.

"Our allies in Saudi Arabia face as great, if not a greater, threat by virtue of this escape than we do," she said.

A Yemeni official involved in the inquiry into the escape said Thursday that "many" warders had been suspended and detained since investigators began interrogating staff on Monday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press, refused to give the number of staff that had been suspended, but said they had passed information and tools to the prisoners taking part in the escape.

The official said security forces have detained more than 80 people in connection with the breakout. They include the prison warders, relatives of the fugitives and members of Islamic groups. The forces have also set up checkpoints around the country to search for the fugitives.

The U.S. ships are part of a Dutch-led task force of ships from different countries that routinely patrols the international waters of the Gulf of Oman, the North Arabian Sea and other parts of the region.

According to Lt. Herb Josey, a Navy spokesman, the U.S. ships are there to counteract any attempts by terrorists to launch an attack or use the waters to escape. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is in the region, and some 7,500 sailors are on the ships in the Roosevelt strike group.

The prisoners escaped Friday, apparently by digging a tunnel some 180 yards long that emerged at a mosque. The tunnel was dug with help from conspirators on the outside, according to Interpol.

The prisoners shared the same cell in an underground prison beneath the headquarters for the political security forces. Interpol has said the fugitives included Jamal al-Badawi -- convicted of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in a Yemeni port.

Another escapee was identified as Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeei, considered by Interpol to be among those responsible for a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast. That attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
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Interpol Issues Urgent Global Security Alert After Al Qaeda Prisoners Escape

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