U.S. to end USS Cole probe as Yemen continues to refuse access to suspects
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SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, September 7, 2001
U.S. investigators ordered out of Yemen
WASHINGTON Ñ The United States has pledged to end the
investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
Diplomatic sources said a team of FBI investigators has arrived in Sanaa
for what is said to be the final stage of the investigation of the October
bombing of the U.S. warship in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen U.S.
sailors were killed in the blast.
Sanaa and Washington have been at odds over the investigation. U.S.
officials have attributed the bombing to Saudi billionaire fugitive Osama
Bin Laden and have sought to interview
Islamic fundamentalist leaders and a Yemeni general believed involved in the
bombing.
But Yemen has refused to allow FBI investigators access to these
suspects. Instead, Yemeni officials said Sanaa is convinced that a group of
six suspects captured last year comprise the core of the USS Cole bombing.
Many of the other suspects, they said, have fled to Afghanistan.
"I believe that the task of the American investigators is over and the
case is on its way to court," Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said. "No
Yemeni, whether politician, a member of an Islamic party or anyone else, has
the slightest link with the attack on the USS Cole."
Saleh told the Doha-based Al Jazeera television that the United States
continues to pressure Sanaa regarding the investigation. After the bombing,
he said, Yemen stopped U.S. plans to send
U.S. Marines with attack helicopters and naval vessels.
"We placed them [Marines] under supervision and a security guard and
they bowed to all what the Yemeni authorities wanted," Saleh said. "I have
previously said this is Yemen and not Nairobi or any other country and no
force could play with it."
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