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July 15, 2006
Yemen: Intelligence Officers Sentenced Over Islamist Escape
In a story that doesn't deserve to be forgotten, 12 Yemeni intelligence officers have been sentenced to prison terms for helping al-Qaeda members escape from prison. The even questions the very stability of the Yemeni government. Consider:
* The guilty conspirators were intelligence officers for God's sake. It is not easy to fight Islamist barbarians when your intelligence services have been penetrated.
* The tunnel by which the terrorists escaped led to a Mosque. (So, nothing to see here, move along, Islam has nothing to do with it.) It is hard to win an ideological war when the best arguments--from the Islamic point of view--are with the worst Muslims.
* The prison terms were rather light: they range from eight months to three years. This leads me to suspect involvement in the highest strata of Yemeni power--or at least implicit agreement with the goals of al-Qaeda.
Here is the story: 12 officers jailed in Yemen over Qaeda men's escape
SANAA: A Yemeni military court has sentenced 12 intelligence officers to prison terms ranging from eight months to three years over a prison break by 23 Al Qaeda operatives in February, a state-run website reported yesterday.In a ruling issued on Wednesday behind closed doors, the court also ordered the men's dismissal from their posts for negligence.
On February 3, the prisoners tunnelled their way out of the high- security prison run by the intelligence services in Sanaa. The mass escape embarrassed the Yemeni government and dealt a major blow to its efforts to net Al Qaeda members.
The defence ministry's www.26sep.net website said the court found the officers guilty of negligence facilitating the escape of the Al Qaeda prisoners.
Among the escapees were 13 terrorists convicted over the 2000 bombing of the US destroyer USS Cole and the 2002 attack on the French oil tanker Limburg off the Yemeni coast.
The authorities have said the men dug a 44m-long tunnel from their cell to a nearby mosque using steel food pots and cooking tools.[...]
Posted by Ruy Diaz at July 15, 2006 11:10 AM
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