Feb. 26
YEMEN:
USS Cole: Death penalty upheld
An appeals court upheld on Saturday one death sentence against an al-Qaeda
militant and commuted another to 15 years in prison for the 2000 bombing
of the US Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen.
The court, presided by Judge Said al-Qataa, confirmed the death sentence
pronounced by a lower court on September 29 against Abdel Rahim
al-Nashiri, who is in US custody and was tried in absentia.
But it commuted the sentence against Jamal al-Badaoui to 15 years.
The prosecution had asked for maximum penalties for the 6 militants
charged in July with the bombing, which killed 17 US sailors and was
claimed by al-Qaeda. They were also accused of belonging to the terror
network.
Nashiri was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in October 2002 and
handed over to Washington.
The prosecution had argued during the trial, which opened last June, that
38-year-old Nashiri was "the main bankroller of the attack".
Born in Saudi Arabia of Yemeni descent, Nashiri was described at the time
as al-Qaeda's chief for naval operations and its operations chief in the
Gulf.
Request for harsher sentences squashed
He is also suspected of involvement in attacks against the US embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that killed 224 people, and in the
October 2002 attack on the French supertanker Limburg off south Yemen in
which one Bulgarian crew member was killed and 12 others were wounded.
But the prosecution's request for harsher sentences for the other Yemenis
jailed in connection with the bombing was squashed.
The judge did not sentence to death Fahd al-Qasaa, alias Abu Hadhifa, and
Maamun Ahmed Saeed Answa, both aged 30, who were originally jailed for 10
and 8 years, respectively.
Instead, of the prosecutor's call for capital punishment, Answa had his
sentence reduced to 5 years. Qasaa's sentence was upheld.
The court also upheld the 5-year sentences of Ali Mohammed al-Marqab, 30,
and Murad Saroori, 27, turning down the request from the prosecutor
general that their prison terms be increased to 8 years.
The US sailors were killed when 2 suicide bombers on an inflatable raft
blew themselves up alongside the USS Cole on October 12 2000 in Yemen's
port of Aden.
Yemen has, at the behest of Washington, cracked down on suspected Islamist
extremists since the September 11 2001 terror attacks on the United
States.
(source: SA)
