Murder of the three nuns executed [Archives:2003/633/Local News]

SANAA, April 23 (Reuters) – Authorities have executed on Wednesday a Yemeni man convicted of killing three Asian Roman Catholic nuns in this Arab state in 1999.
The state-run Saba news agency said suspected Islamist militant Abdullah Ali al-Nashiri was executed in the Red Sea city of Hodeidah, 225 km (140 miles) from the capital Sanaa, after President Ali Abdullah Saleh endorsed the death sentence.
The agency gave no further details.
Nashiri was charged with shooting dead Sisters Zilia, 35, and Elita, 40 – both from India – and Michaela, 36, from the Philippines. He was captured shortly after the 1999 shooting and confessed to the crime.
Government officials say that Nashiri was at least the third inmate to be executed in the last four years. The government has arrested hundreds of people suspected of belonging to Islamist groups such as Osama bin Laden's Qaeda network.
In December, a suspected Islamist shot dead an American doctor, her two colleagues and wounded an American pharmacist in an attack on a Baptist mission hospital in the southern town of Jibla. The gunman's trial opened in Yemen last week with the prosecution calling for the death sentence.
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