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Yemen defends anti-terror record but won’t share al-Ahdal
While Sanaa has staunchly defended its cooperation in the global war on terror, a security official said that it will not succumb to US pressure and share its prized catch: Al Qaeda’s Yemen leader. “The United States has been exerting pressure on Yemeni authorities to allow them to interrogate Adhal directly, but this has been refused,” the Yemeni official told AFP on Saturday. On Friday, the interior ministry confirmed it arrested Tuesday Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, alias Abu Issam al-Makki, whom they believe to be the top figure in the country’s branch of Osama bin Laden’s terror network. The ministry said it had nabbed Saudi-born Ahdal in a sting operation in Sanaa, after a cohort of Ahdal was arrested in early November. “Hedi Dalqam, an Al Qaeda activist was arrested at the start of November,” the official said describing him as a “colleague” of Ahdal. Yemeni authorities believe Ahdal replaced Ali Qaed Sunian al-Harithi, alias Abu Ali al-Harithi after the former Al Qaeda Yemen chief was killed with five others in a November 2002 missile attack by the US Central Intelligence Agency in the desert region of al-Naqaa in Marib province, east of Sanaa.

But a London-based Saudi newspaper said Thursday that some US officials “doubt the truth of announcements made by Sanaa regarding anti-terror operations.” Asharq Al-Awsat also said, “some US weapons sold to the Yemeni government were smuggled to Saudi terrorists.” This prompted a sharp rebuke by Yemeni authorities Friday who slammed the “false” newspaper report aimed at misleading “world opinion over Yemen’s serious and decisive position in fighting terror and undermining the growing relations between Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United States.”

“Yemen will not succumb to any form of blackmail irrespective of its nature and source,” said an interior ministry official quoted by the country’s official news agency Saba. The United States said last week that it was in the process of ”confirming” Ahdal’s arrest, adding that he may have been involved in the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden. As proof of Yemen’s commitment to the fight against terror, the official said Ahdal’s arrest was announced “four hours” after it took place Tuesday. He also said cooperation between Yemen and Saudi Arabia in the fight against terror was on the rise following the signing of an agreement between the two countries in June to boost security measures at the border to prevent arms smuggling and infiltration. The official said Yemen handed over to Saudi Arabia at the end of October a group of 10 failed Saudi asylum seekers, including the body of one that died in hospital, but did not say if the group was wanted by Saudi authorities in connection with recent attacks there.

Yemen is bin Laden’s ancestral homeland and is viewed as a hotbed of lunacy militants who fought so-called holy wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. Its government has been under pressure from Washington since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States to crack down on suspected Al Qaeda militants, and has arrested dozens of them. Saudi Arabia and Yemen have recently been swapping fugitives under an extradition agreement. On September 17, Saudi said Yemen handed over Bandar bin Abdurrahman al-Ghamdi, a chief suspect in the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh that left 35 people dead.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2003-11-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=21981