Posted on 10/26/2007 3:43:42 PM PDT by nuconvert
Yemen grants house arrest to Cole attack planner
Reuters
Yemen has commuted to house arrest the prison term of a mastermind of al Qaeda's 2000 bombing of a U.S. Navy vessel after he surrendered to Yemeni authorities, his relatives said on Friday.
Relatives told Reuters they were allowed to visit Jamal Badawi at his home in the southern port city of Aden while under police surveillance.
Details of the decision to release Badawi from prison were not known. But a Yemeni government official who asked not to be identified said the militant remained "under close scrutiny and control of the security forces." He declined to elaborate.
Badawi was one of the architects of the attack on the destroyer Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors in Aden port. He is wanted in the United States, which offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest after his escape from jail in 2006, according to the FBI Web site.
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 Sanaa. He turned himself in about two weeks ago.
Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism after al Qaeda's September 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.
Just my $0.02....
Let the POS stay alive and WATCH him. He could lead us to a nest. Find and erridicate the nest.
Yes I want him dead and would be more than happy to put a hole in him, but I’d like his friends dead as well. ALL of them.
If we have his address we don’t need to waste a JDAM...use one of the 250 pound concrete bombs (kinetic weapon) with the JDAM guidance system dropped from 15000 feet. No need to wake Farouk and his wife next door.
They aren’t terrorists BECAUSE they are poor. Arafat and Bin Laden were billionaires.
ANother factor is that the Clinton admin cashed in the “peace divident” by cutting Navy ships and related semi-Navy auxilleries (I think they are USNS instead of USS, they have mixed crews of Navy and merch. marine.) I’m speaking of our fleet oilers. Many were scrapped, and instead of fueling safely at sea, the Navy was forced to fuel almost anywhere, including risky places such as Yemen.
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