Police in Yemen have uncovered a terrorist cell of four extremists who were recruiting young people to carry out suicide attacks in Iraq and elsewhere, a security official said.

The appeals trial of six men convicted in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole opened in the Yemeni capital San’a today with prosecutors demanding the execution of two defendants who escaped the death penalty.

A Yemeni judge today sentenced two men, including one held in US custody, to death for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

Two men, who escaped from a Yemeni jail last month, have been charged in the US with helping plan the attack on the destroyer Cole in Aden that killed 17 sailors.