A Yemeni court yesterday jailed five Al-Qaeda supporters for 10 years for bombing the French supertanker Limburg and sentenced to death another militant who plotted with them to kill the US ambassador to Sanaa.
Another nine Yemenis received prison terms of three to 10 years for the assassination conspiracy and for plotting with the other six to attack the embassies of the United States, Germany, France, Britain and Cuba. The 15 were also found guilty of forming an armed group that carried out attacks on Yemeni and Western targets.
Yemen, the ancestral home of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has co-operated closely with the US-led "war on terror" to shed its image as a hotbed for militants. Upon hearing the verdict the 15 bearded men in blue prison dress burst into cries of "God is great, America is the enemy of God, Osama bin Laden is God's beloved".
The Limburg bombing off Yemen's coast in October 2002 killed one of the 25 crew and ignited a fire on board the supertanker loaded with 400,000 barrels of Saudi crude. France, the Limburg's crew and its owners Euronav said the blast occurred shortly after a small boat was seen speeding towards the tanker in the Gulf of Aden.
The defendants, all of whom are appealing the verdicts, accused the judge of bias but a former lawyer of some of the men said the verdict could have been tougher. "Those were fairly lenient sentences as most of the charges carried the maximum death penalty," he told Reuters.
Two of the men, brothers Fawaz and Abu Baqr al-Rabe'ie, received 10-year sentences for attacking a helicopter of US firm Hunt Oil in late 2002 and a fine of 18.3 million Yemeni riyals ($99,457) for an attack on a civil aviation building. Hazem Megalli, who received the death penalty, was also convicted of killing a Yemeni soldier at an army checkpoint.
According to interview transcripts, the five Qaeda-linked men told investigators they attacked the Limburg on orders from an Al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, Ali al-Harthi. The CIA killed Harthi with a missile fired from a drone aircraft later the same year.
The prosecution said all 15 defendants planned to assassinate US Ambassador Edmund Hull to avenge Harthi's death. Harthi, and his aide Mohammad Hamdi al-Ahdal who was arrested last year, were suspected of responsibility for the 2000 bombing of the US warship Cole in Yemen's Aden harbour, which killed 17 American sailors.
Five Al-Qaeda suspects are on trial in Yemen for the Cole bombing and a sixth - Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri who was arrested by the United Arab Emirates and handed over to Washington in late 2002 - is charged in absentia.