"Hokay! That's all done! Are there any donuts left?"
A leading al-Qaida militant arrested last month in Yemen was trying to infiltrate the state's security forces, officials close to the investigations said Saturday.
| "Y'know, Mahmoud, that rookie looks kinda like that guy on the most-wanted list... What's his name?" |
Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, was arrested in late November by security forces that surrounded his hide-out west of the capital, San'a, and authorities have been interrogating him since. The officials said that al-Ahdal confessed to forming small, independent cells aimed at infiltrating Yemeni security and gathering intelligence to block the capture of wanted militants.
| Oh, I am so surprised! Oh, Ethel! Bring me my pills! |
Al-Ahdal's sources, including some within his homeland of Saudi Arabia, transferred funds in small amounts into Yemen to avoid detection. Al-Ahdal, also known as Abu Assem al-Makky, has reportedly admitted planning, financing and coordinating the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden harbor, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. He also planned the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker Limburg off the Yemeni coast. In each of those attacks, an explosive-laden boat was piloted up to the larger ship and detonated. The Limburg attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden. At the time of his arrest, Al-Ahdal, 32, was reported to have replaced Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, Osama bin Laden's top deputy in Yemen who was killed by a missile fired from a U.S. drone aircraft last year. A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington said then that al-Ahdal had been among the top 20 al-Qaida figures at large. He has been described by Yemeni officials as supervising the al-Qaida terror group's finances, weapons smuggling and operational planning in Yemen and was well-connected to extremists in other Gulf countries. The Yemeni officials said Al-Ahdal admitted in interrogations to being in close contact with other extremists groups in Yemen such as the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army and the Yemeni Islamic Jihad. |