Khaldoun al-Hakimi was one of 10 prime suspects in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole when he broke out of a Yemeni prison in 2003. He was recaptured, jailed for eight months, then freed. Not long after that, he blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq.
“He told us he was going to check out job prospects in San`a,” said his brother Ghassan al-Hakimi, who lives in the southern port city of Aden. “Had we known he was going to Iraq, we would’ve stopped him.”
Many Yemeni men have slipped into Iraq to join other Arab recruits in the anti-U.S. insurgency. Some fear the fighters will return to Yemen with even more radical ideas – return to a homeland where sympathy for al-Qaida runs deep and weapons are as easy to buy as fresh vegetables.
As if to underline the country’s vulnerability, 23 convicted al-Qaida prisoners tunneled out of a high-security jail earlier this month in the capital San’a. Two of them have since turned themselves in.
A Western diplomat told The Associated Press on Monday the men appeared to have had help both inside and outside the prison.
Outside, they received guidance that helped them dig precisely to a point below the women’s restroom in a nearby mosque. The helpers then drove getaway vehicles.
Inside, corrupt prison officials gave cover during the two or three months it took the al-Qaida convicts to prepare their escape, the diplomat said.
The prisoners needed privacy to dig without being questioned about the noise and to dispose of the dirt shoveled out of the tunnel and prison officials appeared to have provided it. The diplomat said several prison officials were being questioned.
The prison break has raised concerns that the regime is reluctant to crack down on known radicals for fear of a militant backlash. Beyond that, it calls into question a government-sponsored program under which Muslim clerics try cajoling jailed, hardened Muslim radicals into repenting and pursuing a more moderate religious path. Several hundred militants have been freed under the program and some are believed to have headed for Iraq.
There is concern, too, over the militants who began to trickle back to their homes about six months ago, said a second Western diplomat. Those militants stand to be just as disruptive as al-Hakimi, who first got his militant training in Afghanistan.
“If these people had extreme beliefs before, they’re not going to come back calmed down,” said the diplomat, who spoke of a network of returnees trying to recruit young men at mosques and universities. Some of those returning are militants who were in Afghanistan.
Both diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Yasser al-Awadi, deputy chairman of the Parliamentary bloc of the ruling General People’s Congress Party, said Yemenis are largely sympathetic with the militants as a matter of Muslim solidarity and because the West – the United States in particular – has undercut its standing with unpopular policies in the region. He cited the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
“Even those who do not openly pray for bin Laden’s triumph over the Americans do so in their hearts,” al-Awadi said.
The Yemeni government has a problem at home and with its alliance with the U.S. because “the way it views the (militant) issue is different from the way the rest of society views it,” he added.
The government is trying to prevent young men from going to Iraq in a number of ways including making it difficult for them to travel to Syria, a main transit point.
“The men still manage to get away,” al-Awadi said.
Yemenis say the government should encourage them to stay home by providing jobs. An estimated 30 to 40 percent of Yemen’s work force is unemployed.
“The system should give more care to people like my brother,” said Ghassan al-Hakimi. “Stability makes men want to stay home, not go on such missions.”
He said the family had paid a high price for Khaldoun’s disappearance. One of his brothers, Wael al-Hakimi, was arrested about five months ago, three or four months after Khaldoun blew himself up, al-Hakimi said.
“They say they will not release him unless we give them Khaldoun. How can we produce him?” said al-Hakimi. The family learned of Khaldoun’s disappearance shortly after he left Aden to go look for a job in San`a.
Then they got a call saying Khaldoun, who was 30, had died in a “martyrdom” operation in Iraq. Al-Hakimi said he did not know when or where in Iraq his brother perished.
Al-Hakimi said he believes his brother went to Iraq after he lost hope finding a job when he was released from prison in March 2004. He may also have been troubled by his wife’s refusal to return to him after he was first arrested.
