Yemen to Repatriate Five Acquited Saudi Nationals
UPI:
Yemen will hand over to Saudi Arabia five of its nationals acquitted by a Yemeni court of terror charges, including conspiracy to attack U.S. interests.
The ruling General People’s Congress Party said on its Web site Tuesday that Sanaa will soon extradite the five Saudis who were among 19 suspects tried on charges of belonging to the “Zarqawi Cell” which is linked to al-Qaida.
The Yemeni court acquitted the four Saudis over the weekend and a source at the Saudi embassy in Sanaa said the embassy lawyer will receive the acquittal documents from the Yemeni authorities on Tuesday, before the former defendants are handed over.
The Yemeni authorities accuse the “Zarqawi Cell” of conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks against American nationals in Yemen upon instructions of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaida chief in Iraq who was killed last month.
Yemen has been rocked by several terrorist attacks in the past years, including the bombings of USS Cole in the port of Aden in October 2000 and the French super-tanker Limburg in 2002. Both attacks were claimed by the al-Qaida network of Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden.
