CAIRO — Yemen has announced the arrest of eight suspected Al Qaida
insurgents.
The Yemeni Interior Ministry said the detainees were all foreigners and
held Western passports. The ministry said the suspects were charged with
smuggling weapons from Yemen to Somalia, Middle East Newsline reported.
"The eight foreigners were arrested because they smuggled weapons to
Somalia from Yemen," a ministry official told the official Yemeni news
agency Saba. "Preliminary investigations indicate that they are members of
Al Qaida."
The official said four of the smugglers were carrying Australian
passports. A fifth was said to have been a citizen of Denmark. The Defense
Ministry weekly "September 26" reported that the other suspects included
African nationals as well as those who carried British and German passports.
The eight suspects were said to have been former Christians who
converted to Islam and studied Arabic in Yemen's Ayman University. Officials
said the converts were indoctrinated in Yemen.
The United States has helped Yemen build a coast guard to prevent the
smuggling of weapons and flow of insurgents from Yemen to Somalia. Yemen has
served as a leading smuggling route for Al Qaida from the Gulf to the Horn
of Africa.
In the summer of 2006, Al Qaida-aligned forces captured Mogadishu and
since then has seized control of major cities and ports in Somalia. The
forces were said to have received aid from such countries as Libya, Saudi
Arabia and Sudan.
Over the last six weeks, Western countries have raised their security
alert in Yemen. In September, Yemen announced the dismantling of an Al Qaida
cell that sought to attack oil and gas installations.
