Release of detainees delayed [Archives:2003/684/Front Page]

Mohammed Al-Qadhi
Yemen's security authorities have expressed reservations over a presidential decree to release around 150 detainees with charges of terrorism and having links with al-Qaeda elements for 'they still represent a challenge and threat to national security'.
Reliable sources told Yemen Times that high ranking officials are reserved to get these fanatics release and informed the political leadership their resentment over the presidential instructions to set them free in response to the committee of clerics involved in dialogue with the detainees.

Release 'too risky'
Security officials argue that they do not trust the undertaking made by the detainees that they would give up their fanatic views and not target foreign interests in Yemen. These extremists, according to security officials, depend on a juristic rule that they can lie in issues relating to Jihad duties and therefore they lie to authorities and the committee that they have relinquished their extremist ideas and therefore go to practice or plan for terrorist operations after they are released.
Some weeks ago, the Minister of Interior, Dr. Rashad al-Alimi, confirmed that some of the released fundamentalists were found red-handed, planning or taking part in some terrorist operations.

Security defiant
Security authorities insist that they are not obliged to carry out recommendations of the committee of clerics set by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to convince those extremists to give in their fanatic beliefs and live normally in the society. They believe that it is they who should decide whether to release or continue holding those extremists in custody.

Detainees were militants
The sources said that the number of the detainees mount to 240 militants and that the number of those who will be tried is to raise to 65 including those extradited to Yemen by some countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Oman, instead of 40 as announced by the committee.
The trial, which is expected to commence after the Eid vacation will basically target people charged with involvement in the terrorist attacks on the USS Cole, French Tanker Limburg and the plane of the US Hunt Oil company.
Less than a hundred of the detainees are expected to be released during the second half of Ramdhan. The Yemeni authorities already announced that some of those extremist militants have been released and pardoned including leaders of the Islamic Jihad (formerly known as the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army).
The decision has been taken on the basis of the committee recommendations that these people pledged to repent and abide by law and order. However, the fate of the other detainees is not known as there is no evidence against them so that they can be brought to court.

They can not be released as some of them, according to the same sources, challenged a law government committee and security officials who visited them in prison that they would kill what they name infidels and secular-minded people in the country once they are released. Security officials are in a real fix as they do not have law provision entitling them to hold such people for over 2 years in custody or present them to court.
The Yemeni government has been harshly criticized by some human rights international organizations for violating human rights in its war against 'terror'.
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