May 13, 2002	Monday	Safar 29, 1423

SANAA, May 12: A group claiming to have links with the al-Qaeda network threatened on Saturday to carry out suicide attacks in Yemen if 173 people allegedly detained in Sanaa were not released.

The “Sympathizers of the al-Qaeda Organization,” threatened to carry out “suicide attacks against anyone betraying his religion and his people” and also claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack near the house of Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul Qader Bajammal.

“We think our message has not yet reached the apostates. We have understood that our message can only reach them through bloodshed,” the group said in a statement faxed to AFP.

The group had already vowed to carry out “martyrdom operations (suicide attacks) against premises of the intelligence service in all provinces and senior political figures” unless 173 militants it said were held at intelligence headquarters were freed by May 10.

The statement said Thursday’s attack, which only caused material damage, “was the last in a series of blasts with no bloodshed and causing no human losses.”

It also said Yemen was “colonised by the Americans who support the Zionist entity (Israel) with our oil wealth” and promised the Yemeni people to deliver “a blow to traitors” if the 173 were not released.

“The only accusation against the 173 is that they belong to the al-Qaeda organization,” which the United States has blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the group had said in its April 12 statement.

Osama bin Laden’s family, which owns an extremely successful Saudi construction firm, originally hails from Yemen.

The statement was sent from an e-mail address in the name of Salem al-Rabeei, one of the Yemeni prisoners held at a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and brother of Fawaz al-Rabeei, who was said by the FBI last February to be possibly planning a strike in the United States or against US interests in Yemen.

It charged that the Yemeni intelligence service was also detaining the wives of some militants and a number of elderly men, including the fathers of Rabeei and Samir al-Hada. Authorities said last February that Hada was an al-Qaeda suspect shot dead when he tried to throw a grenade at police.

Following September 11, Yemen launched a crackdown on outlaws and suspected members of the al-Qaeda network in an apparent bid to avert a potential US strike, similar to the current US war on al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan.—AFP