Once again, Islamist terrorists have made use of the shelter of a mosque, this time to rescue a captive with American blood on his hands.
The escape of 13 al Qaeda inmates, including two convicted for deadly attacks on a U.S. warship and a French supertanker, was a serious blow to Yemen’s fight against the Osama bin Laden network, diplomats said on Monday.
Yemeni security forces scoured mountainous provinces for the fugitives, who included the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the U.S. warship Cole and the leader of a group that bombed the French oil tanker Limburg two years later.
The United States said it was disappointed at the jailbreak and vowed to pursue the militants with its allies.
“It’s a disappointing development that al Qaeda operatives escaped, particularly one who targeted and killed Americans. We will be working with Yemeni officials and our international partners to actively go after these dangerous terrorists,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
U.S. ally Yemen, bin Laden’s ancestral homeland, has shed its image as a haven for militants by cracking down on al Qaeda. Analysts and opposition politicians said the jailbreak was a serious embarrassment for the government as well as a blow to its security efforts.
“This unravels all the work that the Yemeni government has done over the past couple of years (against al Qaeda),” said a senior Western diplomat. “It is a very serious error.”
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Mohamed al-Sabri of the opposition Nasserite Party told Reuters the escape was “a serious setback for Yemen’s security that puts the country in a very embarrassing position”.
“This has implications not only for Yemen but for all countries in the region,” he added.
Security sources said the militants were among a group of 23 inmates who escaped through a 140-metre (460-feet) long tunnel that appeared to have been dug from a nearby mosque.
The entrance of the tunnel was in the less frequented women’s section of the mosque and the inmates probably fled on Thursday night, the sources added.
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The escapees include prominent al Qaeda members Jamal Badawi and Fawaz al-Rabe’ie.
Badawi masterminded the October 2000 attack on the Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. His death sentence was commuted last February to 15 years in prison. Rabe’ie was sentenced to death for the Limburg bombing.
Badawi should have already been dead. Here’s hoping he reaches that destination soon without taking any innocents with him. The memory of seventeen American sailors demands it.
Yemen should be embarrassed. That these dangerous, murderous swine were able to be let loose is a disgrace to the nation and its security system and an added threat in our efforts against Islamist terror. The question remains: where will that threat surface?