Armies of Liberation

Several other foreigners were arrested in Yemen including Americans, Brits, French, Asians and Africans, at the behest of foreign intelligence agencies. Yemeni security said the group was linked to the Nigerian’s airliner terror plot and Anwar Awlaki who repeatedly announces how proud he is to have been Abdulmattalab’s “teacher.”

An Australian woman, Shyloh Giddins, was arrested in Yemen May 15. Her two children are under house arrest alone, with a neighbor tending to them twice a day. Giddens was associated with some Bengali citizens who were later deported from Yemen. ”

Yemen holds Americans, others in al-Qaida probe
By AHMED AL-HAJ (AP)

SAN’A, Yemen — Yemeni authorities have detained several foreigners, including Americans, Britons and an Australian woman, in connection with an investigation into al-Qaida’s increased activity in the country, security officials said Wednesday.

The arrests were made after foreign intelligence agencies provided lists of names of people they wanted detained or put under surveillance, the two security officials said. (Read on …)

(Update: its his brother at university in the UK.)The 26Sep.net, a Web site linked to Yemen’s military and security service, identified the suicide bomber in Monday’s attack on a convoy carrying the British Ambassador as Othman Ali al-Selwi, a 22-year-old student from the southern city of Taiz.

(Head of Central Security and presidential nephew) Yahya Saleh’s newspaper, Naba News reports the suicide bomber studied in Britain for nearly two years on a scholarship awarded by the British embassy and returned to Yemen a few months ago. He had no overt extremist leanings his family said. Naba’s sources theorize that he was radicalized in the UK or else the bombing was a reaction to a personal issue with the Embassy related to his studies.

Other sources say the 22-year old al Selwi was imprisoned in Sana’a and he paid regular visits to the National Security’s headquarters in Sana’a upon his release. News Yemen reports that al Selwi attended a technical institute in Marib after he graduated high school and was jailed for two years in a PSO jail on charges of belonging to al Qaeda.

This, though, is a ridiculous suggestion: WaPo: A statement by the Yemeni Embassy in Washington suggested that the attack may have been in retaliation for a Yemeni operation that killed two suspected al-Qaeda operatives in the western city of Hodeida on April 18.

If we recall, the two “al Qaeda operatives” killed were carrying IDs from the National Security and one was an agent of the Central Security.

An earlier attack on an official convoy targeted South Korean investigators in March 2009. They were in Yemen following the murder of three South Korean tourists. The route of the motorcade was disseminated to the so called al Qaeda by subverted elements within Yemen’s security forces, Parliamentarians charged.

Update: Yemen rounds up usual suspects, father confirms the bomber was recently released from jail:

Reuters, WaPo; Yemeni police arrested dozens of al Qaeda suspects in sweeps a day after a suicide bomber tried to kill Britain’s ambassador to Yemen, security officials said Tuesday.

At the 22-year-old bomber’s home near Sanaa, his father told Reuters that he condemned his son’s actions and that he had tried to get him to marry and find a job, before the young man went missing around six weeks ago.

Othman Ali al-Sulwi, who wore an explosive belt when he threw himself at a convoy taking Ambassador Tim Torlot to work Monday, had spent two years in prison before being released at the start of this year, his father said.

Naba sent the “He studied in the UK” story out as an email alert. Maybe mistaken identity. Update: yes, its his brother.

Update: The Interior Ministry denies the Reuters report of seven arrests in connection to the attack.

No injuries except to the bomber. Some reports said it was a suicide bomber but the Brits say small bomb. The state news agency SABA says the device was a suicide vest and the bombers head was found three houses away. News Yemen identifies the attacker as 22 year old Othman Ali al-Selwi, who was trained in Mareb province. The attack on a convoy is not the first. In March 2009, al Qaeda attacked the motorcade of South Korean officials who were in Sana’a to investigate a lethal suicide attack on South Koran tourists days earlier.

(CNN) — The British ambassador to Yemen survived an attack on his convoy in the capital, Sanaa, Monday morning, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said.

“There was [a] small explosion beside the British Ambassador’s car. He was unhurt. No other Embassy staff or British Nationals were injured,” a statement said. Initial reports said two Yemenis — a man and a woman — were injured in the attack and taken to a nearby hospital. The convoy carrying Tim Torlot, 52, was near Berlin park and a short distance from the British embassy at the time of the blast.

Nearly related: The Debka spin is Saleh used US counter-terror funds to bribe al Qaeda to leave for Somalia: Failing to eradicate the al Qaeda presence by force, Salah summoned the tribal chiefs harboring al Qaeda centers and through them offered to pay the Islamists to leave the country. The bribe of an estimated $15-20 million was accepted and on April 7, 12 al Qaeda leaders, presenting themselves to the Somali Al-Shebab Islamist rebels as emissaries of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), turned up in Somalia to scout suitable areas under rebel control for new bases, their pockets well lined with US dollars to pay for their lease.

It just never ends. A nice boy from New Jersey is an Qaeda suspect in custody in Yemen who was a) planning an attack b) wounded somehow and hospitalized last week and c) tried to bust out of the hospital Sunday in Yemen and killed a guard. His friends are shocked. I’m shocked too, I thought the shooter was supposed to be a German citizen of Somali origin. Fox also reports he is a a dual citizen, Yemeni-American.

NBC: Federal sources have confirmed that a man from Buena is in custody in the Middle East, and they say he’s believed to be an Al-Qaeda militant who’s accused of going on a deadly rampage.

“We don’t know nothing, we’re trying to hear something,” said Charles Mobley. Those were the only words he would share on camera about his son, 26 year-old Sharif Mobley. Federal sources have confirmed the 2002 Buena Regional High School graduate is currently in custody in the Middle East, suspected of being an Al-Qaeda militant. (Read on …)

Reuters: Following is the final statement from the talks, as released by the British foreign ministry.

Yemen, its friends and partners have today met in London to discuss the many urgent problems which the people of Yemen face.

The meeting reiterated support for a unified Yemen, respect for its sovereignty and independence, and commitment to non-interference in Yemen’s internal affairs. It was clear that economic and social reform by the government of Yemen was key to long term stability and prosperity. It was agreed that a comprehensive approach was needed, with strong support from the international community. (Read on …)

Slideshow, click here.

Mr. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown … Esquire
Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki mon … Esquire
Mr. Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Amr Moussa, … Esquire
Gentlemen, participants at the London Conference …

Honorable Greetings …

In the beginning, allow us to extend our thanks and appreciation to the international community to pay attention to issues in Yemen and in the forefront of those issues is the people of the south (the people of the Republic of Yemen People’s Democratic Republic earlier) that the people who introduced authoritarian rule and his socialist alone is not equal and is not a referendum with the Republic of This culminated in the Yemen Arab occupation of the entire module of the South by force after the summer war in 1994. (Read on …)

WaPo LONDON — Britain suspended direct flights with Yemen on Wednesday and the prime minister said the U.K. will introduce new no-fly lists as it seeks to tighten airport security following the failed Detroit airliner attack.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons the measures are in response to a growing threat from al-Qaida affiliated terrorists based in Yemen.

Such an important topic, so little time…

Etiawan: Britain’s government says international talks on terrorism in Yemen will likely be squeezed into a two-hour session. (Read on …)

Yemeni President Saleh is quite adroit at playing the terror card. Today he warns the US that he will declare jihad if the US attempts any military action against al Qaeda in Yemen, in a statement from Yemen’s Council of Clerics. Its Saleh talking. There’s no way they would issue that without Presidental approval.

The message is simple: Just. Give. Me. The. Money.

Saleh has various mouthpieces: the government media, officials, GONGOs (governmental non-govermental organizations) some “experts” and Sheik Abdulmagid al Zindani (oh! scary!), who is classified by the UN’s 1267 committee as a terrorist financier. Al Zindani endorsed President Saleh’s 2006 “re-election” bid, and Saleh made his first speech of the electoral season from al Zindani’s al Iman University. The Minister of Endowments is Judge Hamoud al Hittar, who ran the now defunct dialog program that released hundreds of al Qaeda. (He never dialoged with the Houthi rebels though.)

Al Hittar is often an intermediary between the regime and al Qaeda. For example in 2003 al Qaeda offered Yemen a truce, and al Hittar was in charge of negotiations. At the time he said some demands were non-starters, meaning perhaps others were workable. That marked the beginning of what al Qaeda calls the (quite productive) “quietness period” from 2003-2006 when the group provided logistical support and thousands of jihaddists to various hotspots around the world, especially Iraq.

To follow is the clerics’ statement. Also below the fold is Foreign Minister al Qirby’s nearly identical statement that US counter-terror aid must be unconditional. The upcoming London Conference on Yemen should not attempt to deal with internal affairs like civil rights, political reforms, press freedom, corruption or economic transparency, he said, repeatedly.

Update: Alert Net: Yemen, facing a daunting array of security and economic problems, needs about $2 billion a year in aid to stay afloat and double that to turn its economy around, Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi said on Thursday…”I am not an economist, but I think one is talking about probably $4 billion a year,” Qirbi told Reuters when asked how much aid was required to rescue an economy struggling with a sharply rising population and falling oil revenues. (Read on …)

WASHINGTON: Twenty other young Muslim radicals have been trained to blow up planes by al-Qaida in Yemen, a young Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a US airliner has told FBI.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, has told FBI that close to 20 other young Muslim men were being prepared in Yemen to use the same technique to blow up airliners, CBS said in an exclusive investigative report.

US surprised by AQAP’s links to Pakistan? Say it aint so…

Newsweek: U.S. officials have been surprised by what they’ve discovered about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt by a Nigerian student who says he was trained and equipped there. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as this offshoot is called, is linked directly to the “core” group in Pakistan and it is now “one of the most lethal” affiliates, White House counterterrorism coordinator John Brennan said at a news conference.

Times Online:

Yemeni security sources believe that of the 15-20 Britons recently recruited by Al-Qaeda, most have undergone training in camps in Rafad, a mountainous region in the southeast. It lies in the province where Abdulmutallab is thought to have met Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who is viewed as a big influence in luring foreign recruits to Al-Qaeda.

One institution popular with British Muslims is Dar alHadith in Dammaj, northern Yemen. US defence officials have described the institute as a “known terrorist training centre”. This has always been denied by the institute.

Students can access weapons there, and teachings have traditionally been anti-western. Students are told that democracy is an enemy of Islam and locals are reported to refer to America as “the great Satan”.

Abu Muaz, head of the Salafi Youth Movement in the UK, said about 50 Britons had gone to study at Dar al-Hadith. “Most want to learn about Islam, but there are some jihadi supporters who decide to take up arms,” he said.

The Brits want to coordinate the counter-terror funding about to be funneled into Yemen, and offer Yemenis an alternative to al Qaeda. What Yemenis need is an alternative to President Saleh. Even the State Department notes that Yemenis are unable to impact the governance of their county, change it or hold it accountable. Could we start there? Or rather, let Yemenis start there?

Yemen was pledged 4.6 billion (yes thats a B) dollars in development funds at the 2006 donors conference. It didn’t do much good. What the western donors should be convening is a war crimes tribunal or, at a minimum, a major crimes tribunal like the one Ms. Clinton suggested for Afghanistan to help rid it of top level corrupt officials. Offer the Saleh family amnesty, and let them leave. All the al Qaeda problems will clear up much more quickly because without Saleh, al Qaeda will flee Yemen.

Times Online: Gordon Brown is to host an emergency summit this month on the terror threat posed by Yemen after the attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner on Christmas Day.

The Prime Minister and Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, will seek agreement on an international fund to help the Yemeni Government to drive al-Qaeda out of the country. (Read on …)

How many of the “secret training camps” are actually “abandoned military bases” like the one found in Sa’ada when the Germans were doing a fly-over searching for the children? Or have been built with the assistance of subverted aspects of the security forces, and thats a generous description, like the one in the mountains near Ja’ar?

The Sun COPS fear that 25 British-born Muslims are plotting to bomb Western airliners. The fanatics, in five groups, are now training at secret terror camps in Yemen. (Read on …)

No, sorry. Its not just extremely tacky; its a security risk. The Yemeni gov’t was crowing when she came to the YO as a pro-government female American journalist. I recall it quite well and the older stories of another high level western official caught up in a complicated and highly nasty plot. True or not true isn’t the issue, possibly true is good enough to demonstrate the vulnerability. The UK needs a new ambassador to Yemen, pronto. He’s a lovely guy according to all accounts, but thats not good enough in the modern world.

One explains: ‘Because she wasn’t registered, she wasn’t security checked for several months — this was a foreign journalist, with close contacts among pro-government Yemeni journalists, living in the Ambassadorial residence. Daily Mail

The kidnapping and murders may be the work of the group of the foreign (Arab and non-Arab) al Qaeda that began arriving in Sa’ada in April, as we reported here at the time and I think its in one of the articles. It was a substantial number and independently reported by multiple outlets.

If so, it would account for the deviation from the pattern of terror attacks established previously by the indigenous al Qaeda group, which has been to murder foreign tourists by suicide bombing or in one case, by strafing them with gunfire. Kidnapping foreign female aid workers is a standard and current tactic of terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. The arrival and amassing of foreign terror operatives in Sa’ada was certainly not a haphazard occurrance, and this may be not either.

The drug dealers story also seem a reasonable explanation, and it has a lot of resonance on the ground, but it wouldn’t account for the torture and mutilation. The story is that a large shipment of drugs was confiscated by security, who refused to release the drugs back to the dealers after negotiations. The kidnapping was a method of leveraging the talks. The kidnapping of nine persons is certainly the work of a group with prepared logistics, not a temporarily insane person overcome with jihaddist fervor and armed with a jambia.

If the back story relates to negotiations over confiscated drugs, it would account for the Yemeni government’s early and conflicting announcements of the kidnappng itself and the rush to blame the Houthis. As we know, many drug smuggling rings have some association with and support of regime affiliated individuals. The concerns of the Yemeni mafia often run counter to standard governmental administration and violently conflict with other aspects of the regime (like the Coast Guard). There’s big money involved in drug smuggling in Yemen; one shipment of hashish confiscated after an external intel tip had a street value of USD 20 million.

Then of course, as with all terror attacks in Yemen, there is the false flag theory- where some element of the Yemeni security has involvement. This thinking shakes out into two forms- 1) subverted security directs and/or provides logistical assistance to al Qaeda and 2) deliberate acts by the Yemeni government under the guise of al Qaeda (or in this case the Houthi rebels) to manipulate Western sentiment and analysis. In the current scenario, the regime by blaming the rebels for the kidnapping ultimately legitimizes the resumption of the Sa’ada war and gains recognition of the rebels as “terrorists”, something the international community has not done. It also would serve, as it has, to take oxygen away from the growing southern protests and calls for dissolution of the unified Yemeni state. The “false flag” conceptualization as an overall theory of Yemeni government practice has been advanced in Yemen by persons ranging from al Qaeda operatives themselves to mainstream opposition leaders and the former president of South Yemen Ali Salem Beidh.

Independent: The bodies of three women hostages found in Yemen are believed to show signs of torture and extensive mutilation, it emerged yesterday as security officials investigated whether the reasons for the killings were religious rather than purely political.

Two of the murdered women belonged to a Bible school in Germany and had links with a Baptist charity operating in Yemen. The third victim was a Korean who worked for an aid organisation with religious affiliations.

Diplomatic sources said that the savage way the murders were committed did not conform to hostage-taking scenarios associated with a local Shia group, the Houthis, who the Yemeni authorities are blaming, or al-Qa’ida and their associates, who the Americans say have been infiltrating the country.

The status of the other six has been confirmed as “alive” by the state media but their where abouts are unclear.

Earth Times

Sana’a, Yemen – Yemeni kidnappers shot dead three foreign female aid workers on Monday, three days after nine foreigners, including seven Germans, were abducted in north-western Yemen, provincial officials said. They said two German girls out of the group were found alive after police found the bodies of two German nurses and a South Korean female teacher in the district of Akwan of the of Wadi Nushur area east of Saada. (Read on …)

Half a dozen explosions rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday.

“Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world,” Blair said a day after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics.