Al-Wahdawi [Archives:2007/1096/Press Review]

Thursday, October 20
Top Stories

– Citizens in south Yemen expect forcible meeting between President Saleh and BG Nasser Al-Nuba

– Al-Haq Party condemns political and media campaigns against Joint Meeting Parties

– Yemen journalist in Washington: Blacklist of corrupt officials will be revealed soon, government advised to freeze their capitals abroad

– Qaeda member surrenders several months after tunneling out of a political security jail

An al Qaeda militant convicted of helping to plan the deadly bombing of a U.S. Navy vessel off the coast of Yemen in 2000 has surrendered to Yemeni authorities, the website quoted Reuters, which obtained the information from a security source, as saying. Badawi was one of the architects of the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors in the Yemeni port of Aden. Badawi, whose death sentence had been commuted to 15 years in prison, is one of 23 inmates who escaped from a jail in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in February 2006. “Jamal Badawi surrendered a couple of days ago,” said the source without giving further details.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism after al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The poor country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula is viewed in the West as a haven for Islamist militants. It has witnessed several deadly attacks against Western targets and tourists including the bombing of a French oil tanker in 2002. A U.S. judge ordered Sudan in July to pay almost $8 million to the families of the soldiers who were killed in the attack on the Cole, in which al Qaeda rammed an explosives-laden boat into the American destroyer. Sudan has denied involvement in the bombing and has said it would appeal against the ruling.
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