 A man considered a mastermind of the USS Cole bombing was among 23 persons who escaped from a Yemen prison last week, Interpol said yesterday. The international police agency issued an "urgent global security alert" for those who escaped late last week from the prison via a tunnel. It called the escapees "dangerous individuals."
A Yemeni security official announced the escape of convicted al Qaeda members Friday but did not provide details.
| "I will provide no more!" |
Interpol said at least 13 of the 23 escapees were convicted al Qaeda fighters, who escaped via a 150-yard-long tunnel "dug by the prisoners and co-conspirators outside." A security source in Yemen told Reuters news agency that the tunnel led to a mosque near the prison.
| To a mosque, eh? Must have had some Paleo diggers. |
The source said authorities thought the prisoners had fled Thursday night and definitely were aided by more than one accomplice on the outside, because the tunnel was thought to have been dug from the mosque to the prison. The tunnel entry was in the women's section of the mosque, which is frequented less often than the men's section because women mainly pray at home.
| Perfect cover, in other words ... |
Yemeni officials confirmed to Interpol that one of the escapees was a man identified as Jamal al-Badawi, who is considered to be the mastermind of the Cole attack. Al-Badawi was among those sentenced to death in September 2004 for plotting that attack. Two suicide bombers blew up an explosives-laden boat next to the destroyer as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors.
Another one of the 23 escapees was identified as Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeiee, considered by Interpol to be one of those responsible for a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast. That attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Interpol's urgent global security alert, known as an "orange notice," was issued by agency Secretary-General Ronald Noble "because the escape and unknown whereabouts of al Qaeda terrorists constituted a clear and present danger to all countries," according to the statement. Mr. Noble urged Yemen -- the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden -- to provide names, photographs, fingerprints and other information about the suspects.
| Sure, that'll happen. They'll provide my fingerprints before they provide Badawi's. |
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN yesterday, "I feel very uneasy about this development. "We have so-called allies in the world that are saying they want to help us, and yet how do 23 people 'escape'? It raises some terribly difficult questions."
| Babs finally getting a clue? Or does she plan to blame Bush? |
She added, "It really makes our job harder. Now, intelligence has to work on something they didn't think they had to work on." |