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• USS Cole plotter escapes Feb. 5: A man considered the mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole and another involved in an attack on a French tanker were among the 23 people who escaped from a Yemen prison. NBC's Pat Dawson reports. Nightly News |
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SAN’A, Yemen - A senior U.S. counter terrorism official told NBC News on Monday that the United States is "very concerned" that Yemeni authorities permitted 23 prisoners — at least 13 of whom were al-Qaida operatives — to escape, noting that "this is not the first time this has happened."
An al-Qaida operative sentenced to death for plotting the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in 2000 was among the group of convicts who escaped from a Yemen jail last week, Interpol said Sunday in issuing a global security alert.
Officials set up checkpoints around the capital of San’a, where the prison was located, to try to catch the escapees before they could flee to the protection of mountain tribes, according to a Yemeni security official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
Some mountainous tribal areas are essentially outside the control of Yemen’s central government, raising fears the fugitives could hide there before escaping the country.
The Yemeni government made no official comment Sunday.
Yemeni officials said Jamal al-Badawi — a man convicted of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the Cole bombing — was among the fugitives, Interpol said. Al-Badawi was among those sentenced to death in September 2004 for plotting the attack, in which 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.
A Yemeni security official announced the escape of convicted al-Qaida members Friday but did not provide any details or names. The official said only that the escapees had all had been sentenced last year on terrorism-related charges.
Interpol said in a statement that at least 13 of the 23 escapees were convicted al-Qaida fighters.
The convicts escaped via a 140-yard-long tunnel “dug by the prisoners and coconspirators outside,” Interpol said. The Yemeni official said the prison was at the central headquarters of the country’s military intelligence services in a building in the center of the capital.
United States 'very concerned'
Without claiming that Yemeni prison authorities were part of a conspiracy, the senior counterterrorism official told NBC News that "It's a matter of concern that they were able to dig a 150-foot-long tunnel" that 23 men could move through.
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AFP - Getty Images file This Oct. 12, 2000, file photo shows the damage done to the USS Cole. |
In fact, the official noted that Jamal Ahmed Badawi, the leading al-Qaida figure who escaped, had escaped before.
Another 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.
Al-Rabeiee also was convicted for an attack on a helicopter carrying Hunt Oil Co. employees a month later and the detonation of explosions at a civil aviation authority building.
Plotting attacks when captured
Beyond the bombing of the USS Cole and the bombing of the MV Limberg, the official told NBC News that some in the group were planning other attacks when captured. In August 2002, for example, an explosion took out an al-Qaida safehouse being used to build bombs for attacks on Americans.
"Badawi is the most significant," said the official. "But he is not the only one. Out of 23, some more important than others. And now, we have a large group of people who know and trust each other and who have worked together. Could they make up a ready made cell? I don't think you will get any disagreement here."
The escape came a day before the expected start of a trial of 15 people charged with involvement in terrorism operations in Yemen, including Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, another suspected plotter of the Cole and Limburg bombings.
The trial was postponed indefinitely.
Yemen was long a haven for Islamic militants. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the government aligned itself with the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But many diplomats and outside experts have raised questions about Yemen’s cooperation and inability to control tribal areas.
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