Jaber Elbaneh, the al-Qaeda operative who had roamed free in Yemen despite a $5 million reward offered by the U.S. government for his capture, was jailed Sunday by a Yemeni judge. Elbaneh's detention was ordered one day after a Washington Post article on how he was living under the personal protection of Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Yemeni government has repeatedly refused U.S. requests to extradite him to stand trial on terrorism charges, straining diplomatic relations between the two countries.
According to Yemen's official news agency, a judge ordered Elbaneh's arrest after prosecutors filed a request to lock him up. Elbaneh is part of a group of 36 Yemeni defendants who are being tried on charges of conspiring to blow up oil installations in 2006.