Yemen's said for the first time that it asked the United States to carry
out last month's missile attack which killed six suspected al Qaeda members.
The Yemeni government has made the announcement in a report to parliament
on militant activity in the Arab state, where a gunman today killed three
Americans working in a missionary hospital.
On November 3, a missile from an unmanned CIA plane blew up a car in the
eastern Marib province, killing six people.
One of those killed was Qaed Senyan Al-Harthi - a key suspect in the 2000
bombing of the US warship Cole near Yemen.
The Yemeni government now says it ordered the US to carry out that missile
attack.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/31/1041196644739.html
Al-Qaeda fleet takes terrorist threat to sea
By John Mintz in Washington
January 1 2003
United States intelligence officials have identified about 15 freighters
around the world that they believe are controlled by al-Qaeda or could be
used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or
commodities, government officials said.
US officials cite such scenarios as al-Qaeda dispatching an
explosives-packed speedboat to blow a hole in the hull of a luxury cruise
ship sailing the Caribbean Sea or having terrorists pose as crewmen and
slam a freighter carrying dangerous chemicals into a harbour.
American spy agencies track some of the suspicious ships by satellites or
surveillance planes and with the help of allied navies or informants in
overseas ports. But they have occasionally lost track of the vessels, which
are continuously given new fictitious names, repainted or re-registered
using invented corporate owners.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, US intelligence agencies have set up
large databases to track cargo, ships and seamen in a search for
"anomalies" that could indicate terrorists on approaching ships, said
Frances Fragos-Townsend, the chief of Coast Guard intelligence.
Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, and his aides have owned ships for
years, some of which transported commodities such as cement and sesame
seeds. But one vessel delivered the explosives that al-Qaeda operatives
used to bomb two US embassies in Africa in 1998, US officials said.
Since September 11, the US list of al-Qaeda mystery ships has varied from a
low of a dozen to a high of 50.
Starting with the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000 by
al-Qaeda men in an inflatable dinghy, a strike that killed 17 sailors, US
officials have noted a steady increase in nautical attacks, some of which
were aborted by the planners or uncovered by authorities at the last moment.
The latest came in October, when the hull of the French oil tanker Limburg
was blasted by a speedboat off Yemen, causing a widespread oil spill. Now
US Navy and Coast Guard intelligence are sorting through the corporate
papers of the world's 120,000 merchant ships. US intelligence officers are
also collating the names and mariners' licence numbers of tens of thousands
of seamen from around the world, a sizeable percentage of whom carry fake
documents and use pseudonyms because of criminal pasts.
US Navy intelligence is also sharing information with dozens of allied
navies, and has enlisted informants among port managers, shipping agents,
crew manning supervisors and seafarers' unions.
Dozens of navy and allied ships are scouring the Arabian Sea in search of
al-Qaeda ships and fighters, in one of the largest naval seahunts since
World War II. Members have boarded and searched hundreds of ships.
US efforts to track al-Qaeda's activities at sea received a boost last
month with the capture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, an alleged mastermind of
al-Qaeda's nautical strategy who officials say is now co-operating with US
interrogators. Another captured operative, Omar al-Faruq, has told
interrogators that he planned scuba attacks on US warships in Indonesia.
Navy officials say al-Qaeda has used one shipping fleet flagged in the
Pacific island nation of Tonga to transport operatives around the
Mediterranean. The firm - which is called Nova and is incorporated in
Delaware and Romania - has allegedly been smuggling illegal immigrants for
years, US and Greek officials said. Its ships also frequently change names
and countries of registry, officials said.
