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Most Al Qaeda cells in Yemen dismantled â prime minister
Yemen has dismantled 90 per cent of Al Qaeda cells in the country, in part by paying off tribes that once sheltered them, Prime Minister Abdul-Kader Bajammal told the Associated Press on Sunday. Bajammal credited US-Yemeni cooperation with his country's progress in the fight against terror. However, he said Yemen does not consider Sheikh Abdulmajid Zindani, a prominent Yemeni cleric the United States maintains actively recruited for Al Qaeda, as a terrorist.
| "He's... ummm... something else." |
The prime minister also said suspects in the 2000 USS Cole bombing that killed 17 American sailors off the southern port of Aden will stand trial in the next few weeks. Yemeni security forces recently recaptured the last of 10 Cole bombing suspects who escaped from prison last year. In conquering Al Qaeda, Bajammal said the government has bought off tribes that once gave shelter to terrorists. He did not say how much it had spent. "No one hands over anyone for free," said Bajammal. "The issue turned out to be a business issue. As long as the others (terrorists) are going to pay, why shouldn't we pay? If we want to avoid a confrontation and the spilling of blood, then money has no value in this respect." Bajammal said his country has made progress in the fight against terror, adding that "Yemen can never be a refuge for Al Qaeda. During the past two years, we have managed to subdue 90 per cent of (Al Qaeda) cells here or the ones that moved to Yemen." He said only a handful of hard-core terrorists remain at large. Yemen, the ancestral home of Al Qaeda leader Osama Ben Laden, has been a fertile recruiting ground and battlefield for the terror network. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, when Washington retaliated against Afghanistan and threatened to take its war on terrorism elsewhere, Yemen agreed to work with the United States against Al Qaeda.
Posted by: Fred 2004-04-04 |
