Yemenis charged with plotting Cole attack

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.

Fahd Al-Quso and Jamal Ahmed Mohammed Ali al-Badawi were charged with 50 terrorism offences, including the murders of Americans.

Al-Quso planned to videotape the deadly attack from an apartment in the hills overlooking the Aden, the indictment said. It was unclear whether such a video ever was made.

The indictments, unsealed in New York today, also allege that al-Badawi plotted to attack the The Sullivans, another US destroyer that had stopped to refuel in Aden.

That attack failed because a small boat loaded with explosives sank under weight, the indictment said. But the terrorists were able to salvage the explosives and eventually use them in the attack on the Cole roughly 10 months later.

The US blames the al-Qaida terror network for the October 12 2000, attack on the Cole, a guided-missile destroyer that was rammed by a dinghy packed with explosives.

“It has been almost three years since the attack on the USS Cole, but we have not forgotten this nation’s commitment to bring justice to all those who plot murder and orchestrate terror, no matter how long they run or how far they flee,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said .

Al-Quso and al-Badawi escaped on April 11 from a Yemeni jail through a hole in a bathroom wall in their detention cell. Authorities in Yemen believe the men travelled either to al-Qaida strongholds in the country’s northern provinces or to the Red Sea port of Al-Hudaydah, where some were from.