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December 3, 2006

Yemen: Two Australian Muslims Released

News from Arab News, the Melbourne Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Sky News.au, DPA and ABC News:

Two Australian Muslims were released from custody in Yemen late on Saturday night. Brothers Mohammed and Abdullah Ayub had been among seven people arrested on October 17 in Sanaa, the capital. The two brothers, who came from Sydney were arrested with a German man, and also another Australian called Marat Sumolsky. Additionally, a Dane and a Briton were also arrested.

Only the Australians were detained, and because their arrests came at the end of Ramadan, consular officials were not able to see the men - 19-year old Mohammed Ayub, 21-year old Abdullah Ayub and 35-year old Marat Sumolsky (Samulski) - for a fortnight.

The three Australians were accused of smuggling weapons to Islamists connected with Somalia. It is possible that Samulski, who also comes from Sydney and remains in custody in Yemen, will be charged on this offense. However his lawyer, Stephen Hopper, denies this, saying that nothing should be inferred from Samulski's remaining in detention. He said: "All that means that the processes in relation to those boys finished before my client. That's the only conclusion that can be drawn at this stage."

What has made this issue complicated, and a source of contention in the Australian press, is the fact the father of the Ayub brothers is a terrorist. Abdul Rahim Ayub (pictured) is Indonesian, and formerly headed the Australian branch of Jemaah Islamiyah. When Jemaah Islamiyah carried out the Bali bombings on October 12, 2002, killing 202 people including 88 Australian tourists, Abdul Rahim Ayub fled from Australia.

Ayub senior is currently in Indonesia, where he is living with his new wife and their six children. The mother of the Ayub brothers is Rabiah Hutchinson, who became a convert to Islam. Last year, her passport was confiscated by ASIO, Australia's intelligence service.

According to Abdul Rahman Ayub, who is the twin brother of Abdul Rahim Ayub and who lives in Jakarta, Mohammed and Abdullah Ayub had been "indoctrinated in antisocial behaviour by their mother who taught them to hate non-Muslims."

Rabiah Hutchinson now lives in Mudgee, western Sydney. She went to Bali in 1984 to marry Abdul Rahim Ayub. She had come into the circle of Abdullah Sungkar, the founder of Jemaah Islamiyah in the early 1980s. It was when she went to hear Abdullah Sungkar preach in Jakarta that she first met the future father of her two sons, and his twin brother.

She claims that when she telephoned her former husband to tell him that Mohammed and Abdullah had been arrested, he said to her: "This is no business of mine - I don't know and I don't want to know." Rabiah Hutchinson had split from her husband in 1996, and she apparently kept her sons away from their father. She also has a daughter. After leaving Abdul Rahim Ayub, she then went to Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban. She worked as a midwife and nurse, and returned to her hometown of Mudgee immediately after 9/11 and just before the US invaded Afghanistan.

The uncle of the brothers, Abdul Rahman Ayub, denies that he had been in the Philippines with members of Jemaah Islamiyah and Filipino terror group Abu Sayyaf. He is now a preacher, who claims to have abandoned his associations with Jemaah Islamiyah and its spiritual head, Abu Bakar Bashir.

He and his twin brothers both blame Rabiah Hutchinson for turning Mohammed and Abdullah Ayub from "sweet, cute boys" into hardliners who wish to establish a Muslim caliphate. Abdul Rahman had been deported from Australia just before the Bali attacks of 2002. Abdul Rahman had also fought in Afghanistan in the 1990s, alongside Osama bin Laden. He also knew Hambali, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah after Abdullah Sungkar died in November 1999. Hambali (aka Nurjaman Riduan Ismuddin) was arrested in Thailand on on 15 August 2003, and is now in US detention in Guantanamo.

Abdul Rahman told the Australian a month ago: "But should we be responsible for people we once used to be friends with? Just because I knew Hambali means nothing. People think that all the veterans from Afghanistan are the same, but it's just not true. In Afghanistan I organised taking care of orphans and giving them food, but on my return I'm somehow a terrorist."

Even though the Ayub brothers have been released from Yemeni custody unconditionally, they will not be returning to Australia just yet. They intend to remain in Yemen, to learn more about religion and language, states their lawyer, Adam Houda.
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In other news, DPA reports that on Saturday morning, an armed man threw a hand grenade at a house in a residential district of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. Six people were injured, one seriously. He fled in a car after the attack.

Additionally, on Saturday, state security prosecutors in Yemen began questioning 22 suspected Al Qaeda operatives, who are thought to have planned terror attacks in the country.

The group is connected to Fawaz al-Rabyee, who had been sentenced to death in 2004. While on the run and hiding, he is believed to have recruited the 22 suspects to form a terror cell. Al-Raybee was killed when his refuge in Sanaa was raided on October 1.

The group are linked to suicide attacks which took place on September 15. Four cars, packed with explosives, had been driven into two oil facilities in the east of the country, at Hadhramout and Mari provinces. One security guard was killed. Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the September attack.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 3, 2006 11:48 PM

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