Two al-Qaeda suspects held by Germans We want them! [Archives:2003/02/Front Page]

BERLIN – German officials, acting on the request of the United States, have arrested two Yemeni citizens suspected of having links to al Qaeda network.
But both Yemen and the U.S. are asking Germany to hand over the pair.
“They are linked in a more general way with supporting al Qaeda, but not directly with September 11,” an unidentified German official told Reuters on Friday.
“One of them seems to be a bigger shot.”
A German anti-terrorism official identified those arrested as Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Mouyad and Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed.
A U.S. official in Washington called Mohammed Ali Hassan a “significant figure”.
“He’s a fundraiser for al Qaeda. He’s not a top-tier guy and he’s certainly not bin Laden’s finance guy. But he is a significant fundraiser for al Qaeda,” a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
There was no information available on the other suspect.
Germany is expecting an extradition request from the United States, a German Justice Ministry spokesman said.
Yemen asked Germany to hand over the suspects it said were seized in Frankfurt for questioning in Sanaa. The official Saba news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry official as saying that the U.S. embassy in Sanaa had asked Yemeni authorities to allow it to take custody of the suspects.
“Yemen requests the government of the Federal Republic of Germany to hand the Yemeni citizens to her and not to any other party. The concerned Yemeni authorities will interrogate them on the charges attributed to them,” Saba quoted the official as saying in a statement.
It said Yemen would put the suspects on trial if the United States provided evidence deemed by Yemen to be sufficient to incriminate them in court.
Germany was an important launch pad for the September 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks on the United States blamed on al Qaeda. Three of the four pilots lived in the northern port city of Hamburg in the 1990s.
The first September 11 trial is under way in Hamburg against a suspected co-plotter, Moroccan student Mounir El Motassadeq.
Outside of the situation of the pair held in Germany, relations between Yemen and the U.S. continue to be warm.
This week the U.S. embassy announced that Yemeni security officers will be trained in the United States to improve counterterrorism efforts in their homeland.
In a statement posted on the embassy Web site Wednesday, it said the Defense Department would train as many as nine Yemeni officers.
One would be sent to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., while between four and eight officers from Yemen’s military intelligence would study English at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, the statement said.
It was not clear when the officers would travel to America or how long the training would last.

——
[archive-e:02-v:2003-y:2003-d:2003-01-13-p:./2003/iss02/front.htm]