December 14, 2006

American, Europeans, Held in Yemen Terror Ring

Long time friend and Yemen expert Jane has the goods on a ring of terrorists operating from Yemen. One of them is an American born in New Mexico of Yemeni parents, and was the Muslim Chaplin in Residence at George Washington University.

Short story: Previously under investigation in the US, American Iman Anwar al-Alwaki a/k/a Abu Atiq was recently arrested in Yemen. His arrest led investigators to another group connected to September’s thwarted terror bombings in which two of the February al-Qaeda escapees were killed.

The al-Awlaki arrest also led to a later arrest of eight foreigners accused of smuggling guns to Somalia for al-Qaeda including a Dane, a Briton, a German, a Somali, three Australians, and a European of undetermined nationality who may be Austrian. One media report indicates the group was under surveillance by Western intelligence and the arrests disrupted an otherwise productive intelligence operation; other sources dispute this. The Dane is known as Abu Zakaria, whose given name is Kenneth Sorensen. The central figure was reportedly a Somali named al-Ansar. This group of eight included the Australian Ayub brothers, sons of JI leader Abdul Rahim Ayub, who fled Australia after the Bali bombings. Seven of the eight confessed according to the official Yemeni media. However six of eight were subsequently released without charges.

For the longer and more detailed version, check out Jane's post.

By Rusty Shackleford, Ph.D. at 10:19 AM | |