New Prison Break, Seven Escape
YT:
SANA’A, Aug. 1 — Media sources revealed at the end of the week that seven individuals suspected of being affiliates of the Jihad Organization, known as Hitat Group or Yemeni-Afghans Group, managed to escape Al-Bahrain Prison in Ja’ar city, Abyan Governorate.
According to Al-Shoura.net, “helped by a person from outside the prison, seven individuals affiliated to the Hitat Group managed to escape on July 26 from the Al-Bahrain Prison, after arranging for the escape by staying outside their rooms. They attacked the guards there, and during the process bullets were fired into the air and smoke grenade were ignited for camouflage.”
The same sources added that security authorities were able later to arrest two of them, while the other five managed to run away.
Security authorities, right from the beginning, masked the events. It is also said that authorities were compelled to acquit the escapees, some of whom spent ten months in jail, without any accusations.
Other sources linked their escape and the amnesty process to the threat released by Khalid Abulnabi, the Hitat Group head, as well as the differences between the members of the group which had amounted to fighting.
Security apparatuses in Abyan arrested a number of those connected to the Hitat Group in August, 2006. Some of those arrested had participated in attacking army units in 2003 in the Hitat Mountains, including an attack on a military medical caravan, causing death and injuries to many doctors and nurses affiliated to Yemeni Military Hospital, with accusations that they worked for the American Investigation in the area.
At the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) which expected them to go to Iraq to fight the American forces, security authorities took photos of the individuals arrested at that time. In Addition, the local council exerted efforts to set them free and issued a resolution with regards to jailing without accusations or referral to the prosecution Prosecution.
This escape is considered the first of its kind since the escape of 13 individuals, belonging to Al-Qaeda, from the Political Security jail in Sana’a five months ago.
