Interpol Waiting for Info on Escaped Cole Bomber
You would think in an effort to hold on to their last shred of credibility, the regime would hand over the names and photos. When Democrat Senator Barabara Boxer of all people calls you a “so called ally,” really its time to pay attention.
An Interpol statement said: “Red notices can only be issued by Interpol at the request of member countries and only if they are supported by underlying national arrest warrants.”
Interpol’s Secretary-General Ronald Noble asked Yemen to provide the required information immediately, saying the escape could not be considered an internal problem.
“Unless Interpol red notices are issued urgently for these fugitives and unless the world community commits itself to tracking them down, they will be able to travel internationally, to elude detection and to engage in future terrorist activity,” Noble said.
The 13 militants were among 23 inmates who broke out of jail in the capital Sanaa in a major embarrassment for Yemeni authorities, who have cracked down on militants in the ancestral land of Osama bin Laden and positioned themselves as an ally of the United States in the war on terrorism.
They included Jamal Badawi, mastermind of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. He was originally sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to 15 years in prison.
Another prominent escapee was Fawaz al-Rabe’ie, sentenced to death as leader of the group convicted of bombing the French oil tanker Limburg off the Yemeni coast in 2002, killing one crewman.
A Yemeni state-run Web site (www.almotamar.net) said 17 of those who escaped were convicted of al Qaeda-linked crimes, while the other six were awaiting trial for similar charges.
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN: “I feel very uneasy about this development … We have so-called allies in the world that are saying they want to help us, and yet how do 23 people ‘escape’? It raises some terribly difficult questions.”
Forbes: Noble urged Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, to provide names, photographs, fingerprints and other information about the suspects. …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…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.
