PARIS, Feb 5: Interpol issued a worldwide alert on Sunday after the escape from a prison in Yemen of 23 suspected Al Qaeda members, all of whom were considered to be “a clear and present danger to all countries”.
The international police organization, based in Lyon, France, said in a statement that its secretary general, Ronald Noble, personally ordered the alert, known as an Orange Notice.
Interpol noted that some of the 23 men who escaped on Friday from the prison, run by Yemeni political security service in Sanaa, were involved in the 2000 bomb attack on the US warship Cole and the 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg.
“Their escape cannot be considered an internal problem for Yemen alone,” Noble said.
He urged Yemen to provide names, photographs, fingerprints and other details on the escapees so that Red Notices — or international arrest warrants — could be issued for each of them.
“Unless the world community commits itself to tracking them down, they will be able to travel internationally, to elude detection and to engage in future terrorist activity,” he said.
Yemeni officials have described the escaped prisoners as among the most important and dangerous members of Al Qaeda.
They are said to include Fawaz al-Rabihi, who was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the Limburg attack, and Jamal al-Badawi, who was serving a 10-year sentence for the Cole bombing.
One official said the prisoners escaped through a 140-meter underground tunnel, which led them to a nearby mosque where they mingled with worshippers.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Seventeen US sailors were killed when two suicide bombers on an inflatable raft blew themselves up alongside the USS Cole, a destroyer, in Yemen’s southern port of Aden in October 2000.
In October 2002, a French tanker, the Limburg, was the target of a deadly attack off Yemen’s south-eastern coast. An explosion ripped through the ship, killing one Bulgarian crew member and wounding 12 others.—AFP
