Yemeni concerns

By Nasser Arrabyee

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Iraqis accused of embassies bomb plots were released this week and allowed to stay in Yemen, reports Nasser Arrabyee from Sanaa.

A Yemeni special court ordered on Monday the release of three Iraqi men charged with attempting to attack the United States and United Kingdom embassies in Sanaa. The accused had served two years in custody.

The court, chaired by judge Mohamed Al-Badani, said Yemeni laws permit the three men to stay in Yemen and bring their families if they wish.

"What the prosecutor and media reported, that Ali Rashed Al-Saadi [tried in absentia], Ahmed Salman Al-Zabeedi, Ahmed Jassim Al-Ani, and Mohamed Mahdi Abdul-Rahman Al-Kanaani had been working with the former Iraqi intelligence agency, was not proven," said the judge.

In the last 11 September hearing, the three men appealed to the Yemeni government not to hand them over to the current Iraqi government. They said they feared the Americans and Britons since their photos were in the press and on TV. The men, all in their 40s, were arrested on 26 March, 2003, one day before carrying out alleged attacks against the American and British embassies.

They were arrested in the house of the fourth defendant, Ali Rashed Al-Saadi who was tried in absentia. The trial began on 7 August. The four defendants were charged with spying for the government of the ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The men, however, pleaded innocent and said they had been coerced into confessing to the charge. They said they had entered Yemen only to work as teachers. In last month's hearing, the prosecutor showed the court explosives confiscated by security authorities during the arrest of the three Iraqis.

Prosecutor Khaled Al-Mawri told the court that five small bags of TNT were found at the fugitive Al-Sadi's home at the time the other three defendants were detained.

He said that Al-Zabeedi, Al-Ani, and Al-Kanaani told the security investigators that Al-Saadi had acquired the explosives for use in the alleged terror attacks.

According to the alleged confessions, Iraq's former intelligence service asked the defendants to attack the British and US embassies plus other Western targets in Yemen when the war in Iraq began in March 2003. Defence lawyer Abdul- Aziz Al-Samawi denied that the three defendants knew anything about the explosives and asked that the charges against his clients be dropped.