Armies of Liberation

WaTi

The Navy is warning ships sailing in waters near Yemen that al Qaeda is planning seaborne attacks similar to the 2000 suicide boat bombing of the USS Cole. A warning notice posted on the Web site of the Office of Naval Intelligence and dated March 10 stated that the alert was issued to promote security for shipping companies and other vessels transiting the piracy-plagued region.

“Information suggests that al Qaeda remains interested in maritime attacks in the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait, Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden along the coast of Yemen,” the special advisory notice stated.

Yemen Observer: US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James R Clapper has met president Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana’a to discussed the joint cooperation between the United States and Yemen.

Naval Intelligence warns al Qaeda remains interested in attacking ships in the bab al Mendab

Guardian: Saudi security services have arrested more than 100 militants believed to be linked to al-Qaida, the country’s Interior Ministry said today.

The suspects include 47 Saudi nationals, 51 Yemenis, a Somali, an Eritrean and a Bangladeshi, a ministry statement said.

The arrests of the suspects – accused of planning attacks on oil plants and other infrastructure – were carried out over five months.

Many of those detained had come to Saudi Arabia on visas to visit holy sites or by sneaking across its borders. The ministry alleges that they wanted to join up and organise attacks with al-Qaida.

Most of those held were arrested in the southern province of Jazan, near the border with Yemen, according to Saudi media reports.

Explosives belts, apparently intended for use in suicide attacks, were also reported to have been seized.

One of those being held is a Yemeni national described by security officials as a prominent member of al-Qaida, according to Reuters.

Separately, the authorities arrested 12 people from two al-Qaida cells originating across the border in Yemen, where a branch of the terrorist network has established a significant base of operations over the past year.

The two cells were also in the preliminary stages of planning attacks on oil and security facilities in Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing Eastern Province, home to the world’s biggest oil refinery.

“The 12 in the two cells were suicide bombers,” security affairs spokesman Mansour al-Turki said. “We have compelling evidence against all of those arrested, that they were plotting terrorist attacks inside the kingdom.”

One India Fox News quoted Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansour Al-Turki as saying that the arrest of the alleged plotters not only had prevented the attacks, but broken up a network of Al Qaeda-affiliated radicals that included two suicide bombing cells.

“They were ready but waiting for an order which fortunately didn’t come,” he said of the militants.

While Al-Turki declined to identify which facilities the suspects were allegedly targeting, he said one of the suspects, a Saudi national, was employed by a private Saudi industrial security company responsible for protecting oil sites and other critical infrastructure.

“As an employee, he had access to all of those sites and to current plans for protecting them,” he said.

He did not dispute news reports indicating that the plotters had been exchanging e-mails with a man in Yemen believed to be a senior leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.ccording to reports, members of the two suicide cells had been exchanging coded e-mails about the planned strikes with a man in Yemen whom the accounts called “Abu Hajer.”

One Saudi official said “Abu Hajer” is believed to be a nom de guerre for Said Al Shihri, a Saudi leader of AQAP.

He was released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in December 2007 after being held there for six years, and he was taken to a Saudi rehabilitation center from which he disappeared. (ANI)

could be anything… Later reports say they are French. Random Dhamar factoids:Yahay Al-Amri, the former Governor of Sa’ada, described as a “pro-Salafi active advocate” is Governor of Dhamar (a predominantly Zeidi stronghold and learning center). Complaints have been reported by residents there of forced takeovers of Zeidi Mosques by Salafi preachers (as occurred in Sa’ada). Also the second largest Dar al-Hadith Institute is in Maber, Dhamar headed by Sheik Mohammed al-Imam al-Reimi, a former student of Sheik al-Wadi. Armed guards protect the institute which has a capacity of 1500-2000 students.

26 September Net: Police in Yemen’s central Dhamar province have arrested two Europeans while training in marksmanship. Two rifles were seized with the foreigners who were arrested at Naqil al-Mashana in Jahran district, the Interior Ministry reported on Sunday. They were both 24 years old and one with an Arab name. An investigation is underway. saba

Yemen Post: Yemen has said that it needs $ 44 billion to implement its fourth five-year economic and social development plan for 2011-2015 and urged donors to release their pledges made during the 2006 donor conference in London. (Read on …)

I would think AQIY would haven taken credit as they do for their other failed operations especially after the Nigerian.

Ethioguardinan: British intelligence agents have reopened their investigation into the mysterious crash of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet last February after a terror suspect taken into custody in Saudi Arabia confessed it was bombed, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. The information came after the mass arrest of more than 100 al-Qaida terror suspects in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia). (Read on …)

The National:

The Yemeni state security court in the capital sentenced Hussein Muthana al Akil, a professor at Aden University, to three years in prison for supporting the growing secessionist movement. Fadi Hasan Ba’om, the son of a senior leader in the movement, was given five years for calling for the separation of southern Yemen, instigating civil disorder and violent acts and inciting sectarian division and hatred among the Yemeni people.

The sentences were the latest setback for the southern movement, which is facing increasing pressure from the embattled Yemeni government in Sana’a.

Judge Ridhwan al Namir said al Akil was guilty of publishing “false information and inciting an armed disobedience and committing crimes aimed at harming national unity as well as abusing the president of the republic”. The court said al Akil published articles in which he wrote that “the northern occupation forces are looting the oil of the south”. (Read on …)

HRW urges Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Yemen, quite a good suggestion. The following from Relief Web by Christoph Wilcke, a senior Middle East and North Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Abu Dhabi is the host today for the inaugural gathering of Friends of Yemen, a group established in January at an international meeting of concerned states in London. This members, consisting of Gulf and key Western states in addition to representatives of intergovernmental institutions,need to address Yemen’s human rights problems honestly if they want to assist its people and address the threats emanating from that troubled Arabian country. (Read on …)

In Yemen, al Qaeda’s training camp in the Abu Jabara valley is no secret. It is in an old military camp between Sa’ada and al Jawf provinces, near the Saudi border, and it houses hundreds of Yemeni and foreign al Qaeda loyalists.

Acting as mercenaries for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, al Qaeda operatives fought in the Sa’ada War against the Houthi rebels. As a result, hundreds of jihaddists gained battlefield experience during the five years of brutal war. In an interview with Jane Novak, Yemeni politician Hassan Zaid, recommended the terrorists in Abu Jabara be disarmed now that the war has ended.

Corrupt al Qaeda

Despite their high flown rhetoric, Quoranic citations and photo-shopped internet magazine, al Qaeda in Yemen is just as corrupt as the Saleh regime itself. The enmeshment of al Qaeda with Yemen’s subverted military and intelligence services is a product of long standing relationships that stretch from the caves of Afghanistan to the presidential palace in Sana’a.

The sixth round of the Sa’ada War ended in February when President Saleh declared a ceasefire. Yemen’s ability to construct a durable peace is doubtful. Disengagement is moving slowly. A frank assessment of the underlying issues of exclusion, religious pluralism, development and equality never occurred.

The rebels are required to turn in their weapons as one condition of the cease fire. Opposition politician Hassan Zaid said the terrorists in the Abu Jabara al Qaeda camp should be disarmed as well. “This group sours the atmosphere of peace,” Mr. Zaid noted to al Tagheer.

Al Qaeda with Official Passports

The rebels are Zaidis, a Shiite offshoot, and claim religious discrimination by the state. Mr. Zaid leads the Zaidi oriented al Haqq opposition party and previously headed the Joint Meeting Parties, Yemen’s opposition coalition. He disputed the notion that he was the rebels “spiritual leader” as regime propaganda to the Yemen Post.

In my interview, Mr. Zaid confirmed that the al Qaeda fighters in Abu Jabara participated in the war against the Houthi rebels. “Our brothers said there are around 500-800 (al Qaeda) fighters training there under General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar’s command,” he said.

A powerful military commander, General al Ahmar is President Saleh’s half brother and, as commander of the North West region, led the war against the rebels. Al Ahmar recruited fighters for Osama bin Laden during the Afghan jihad in the 1980’s and is reputed to facilitate several al Qaeda groups in Yemen.

“They are well armed and holding authorized (official) ID which enables them to move between Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Zaid said. “They joined the government to fight the rebels. They are well supported and financed by (sources within) Saudi Arabia, and they are better-off, richer, than other Qaeda members in Yemen.”

Foreign al Qaeda in Northern Yemen

The al Qaeda group in Sa’ada includes foreign fighters, but the presence of westerners is unclear. In March 2009, the southern weekly Attagammua reported, “Local sources in Saada confirmed that members of various Arab nationalities as well as citizens from different provinces” were in Abu Jubara. The papers sources noted “the striking emergence of Salafist groups in the city of Saada, and the effort to build a center for Yemeni al-Qaeda in Yemen.”

The independent Yemen Times reported foreign fighters in Sa’ada the same month: “Thousands of Jihadist groups, or Salafia – including Yemenis and foreigners from neighboring Arab and non-Arab countries (were) gathering against the Houthis in coordination with the army under the management of military centers and sheikhs…”

In June 2009, al Eshteraki, mouthpiece of the Yemeni Socialists Party (YSP), said that large numbers of al-Qaeda operatives and other jihadist organizations in the Abu Jabara camp had gathered to meet “the Shiite tide,” represented by the Houthi rebels.

“It was originally an official camp of the armed forces of Yemen that was abandoned,” al Eshteraki reported, noting the camp is under the stewardship of Afghan Arabs inducted into the Yemeni military after they fought for President Saleh in the 1994 civil war. Usama bin Laden supplied fighters and arms to President Saleh’s jihaddist forces as they battled southern socialists in the 1994 civil war, the New York Times reported.

In December 2009, Attagammua again reported that al Qaeda terrorists who returned to Yemen after fighting American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were in Sa’ada, fighting for the Yemen state.

State Support

The sixth round of the Sa’ada War broke out in August. In October, with the war raging, the Houthi rebels’ website, al Menpar, published an article referencing the Abu Jabara camp that alleged a high level al Qaeda leader had sold al Qaeda’s services to the Yemeni state.

“They agreed that the government will provide them with light weapons and the Al Qaida fighters will participate in the war against the rebels. Omar Obadah and his followers who just came back from Saudi Arabia (had) received some training in Afghanistan.”

According to al Menpar, some current al Qaeda leaders in Sa’ada were previously imprisoned in Saudi Arabia and others had escaped in the infamous 2006 al Qaeda jailbreak in Yemen.

“Many sources affirm that this coalition is beneficial to both parties, the Yemeni government, and al Qaeda leaders, and the Saudi’s as well. The Saudi embraced and supported (the camp) because they consider the Houthi rebels in the north as infidels from their perspective,” the article concluded.

In January 2010, Saada Online found a similar arrangement between al Qaeda and the state. The al Qaeda camp in Abu Jabara valley is funded by Saudi sources, the investigation found. After receiving arms and ammunition from the government, the al Qaeda mercenaries “attacked the rebels from behind” the Saudi border. The al Qaeda group coordinates through intermediaries at General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar’s office, the site said, noting some al Qaeda operatives were integrated directly into the military, and the group has freedom of movement across the Saudi/Yemeni border at the al Baqea crossing.

The sixth Sa’ada War took a heavy toll. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are internal refugees. Months of extensive bombing by Yemeni and Saudi air forces targeted markets, mosques, hospitals and refugees. Over 9000 structures were damaged. The Abu Jabara camp was not. It is thought that six western hostages kidnapped in June 2009, a German family and a British engineer, may be located in Abu Jabara. The external focus of al Qaeda in Yemen is a logical outcome of its merger with Yemeni state institutions.

Sana’a, Yemen – A Yemeni state security court on Sunday convicted a former ambassador to Mauritania to five years in jail for his support to secessionist groups in the south of the Arab country.

Presiding Judge Muhssien Alwan said the defendant, Qassim Askar Jubran, was found guilty of “inciting an armed disobedience and committing crimes aimed at harming national unity.”

Jubran, who appeared behind bars at the courtroom for the verdict session, said he would not appeal against the ruling saying: “basically, there is no justice.” (Read on …)