The Empty Quarter

Traveled to the U.S. with his mother in 1995. Recruited by an ‘Amr Muhsen Hassan al-Mahfli al-Raimi. He was previously wanted and was included in Yemen’s 161 most wanted list…

The United Jewish Communities is working with the US State Department, local federations and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to implement the evacuation and help finance the $800,000 expense of absorbing the 110 Yemenite Jews, who represent more than a third of the roughly 280-strong community…

The U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan is in Sana’a where he met with President Saleh over the fate of Yemen’s Guantanamo detainees. Thus far, Yemeni press has reported the meeting as part of a “continuing dialogue” on the matter, although the reality of the U.S. position – the hesitancy to repatriate many Yemeni detainees – has now come out…

News reports have it that the U.S. is considering releasing Yemeni detainees at Gitmo to Saudi Arabia instead of Yemen. Although not here, I have argued in the past that this is most likely what the U.S. would end up doing with that class of prisoners it doesn’t want to see returned into Yemen’s general population right away – which will be ALL returnees to Yemen…

UPDATED: The international community should work with Yemen to stop its people supplying Somali pirates who are disrupting lucrative international shipping routes, a senior U.S. admiral said on Monday…

An official source at the General Secretariat of the General People’s Congress GPC on Wednesday expressed surprise over a statement made by deputy spokesman for the US State Department on the agreement reached by all political forces in Yemen on a two-year extension of Yemeni parliament tenure…

So, I was reading an article today about the recent fiasco over the Marine One specs found on a P2P network source in Iran, when I came across this statement by the President of the company that made the discovery:…

A top official at the National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) has slammed a report of the US Department of State on Qatar’s record in human rights as “politicised” and “full of wrong information”. NHRC secretary general Ali al-Marri said the report has ignored the progress made by Qatar on its human rights record…

UPDATED: The U.S. State Dept released a statement today (as of yet not posted on the Yemen embassy’s website) regarding the decision of Yemen to postpone elections two years. The United States views the delay “with deep concern and disappointment…It is difficult to see how a delay of this duration serves the interests of the Yemeni people or the cause of Yemeni democracy,” it said…

Informed sources have said that a senior U.S. military official that visited Sana’a this week (hint: Lieutenant General Samuel T. Helland, Commander, USMC Forces Central, was just in Yemen) offered U.S. military assistance in hunting out al-Qaeda in Yemen’s tribal areas, according to al-Watan…

Here is the first photo of the U.S. drone that crashed on Socotra Island last Monday. I have previously surmised that the drone was part of anti-piracy recon operations in the Gulf region…

The Kuwaiti government has spared no efforts for releasing the four Kuwaitis still held as terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah said yesterday.He denied accusations that the government has been slack on the issue of the Guantanamo prisoners…

Citizens of Sa’wan and Sheraton zones in the area around the US embassy in Sana’a are complaining about the intensity of security checks in their neighborhood. The locals held a sit-in last Tuesday in front of the parliament protesting against blocking Sheraton Street which leads to their homes, shops and US embassy…

This is pretty cool. There was an article in al-Sahwa that picked up the use of the UAVs around Socotra here – complete with conspiratorial speculation…

Gulf Arab states are beginning to worry that any U.S. rapprochement with Iran could ultimately lead to their worst nightmare — a nuclear-armed, non-Arab, Shi’ite Muslim superpower in their neighborhood…

Greg Johnsen has been busy - and not with his love of controversial novelists. He found and analyzed the names of the 112 controversial “al-Qaeda-linked-not-al-Qaeda-linked” prisonersreleased by Yemen so far. And, well…as Ricky says, “Aaaali, you gots some ‘splainin’ to do”…

During the final months of the Bush administration, top U.S. counterterrorism officials engaged in an intense debate about the fate of the Yemenis detained at Guantánamo Bay. Barack Obama’s Gitmo problem is, in many respects, a Yemen problem. And it just got worse…

The Obama administration hopes to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the next year. But officials keep running into an intractable problem: Nearly half the prisoners are from the Gulf state of Yemen, which is the last place the U.S. wants to release potential terrorists.

Al Awlaki is a highly regarded, American-born, pro-Jihad ideologue with access to a young audience in the United States, even from his location in Yemen. There is no other comparable pro-Al-Qaida American figure who has such tremendous access to audiences or who has such credibility.”

Yemen has launched a number of projects to accommodate the needs of Yemeni individuals being released from Guantanamo Bay, following President Obamas’ decision to close the prison.

Families of two Saudi detainees who committed suicide in June 2006 while being held at Guantanamo Bay have sued the Pentagon, alleging Thursday that torture and brutal conditions at the offshore prison led the men to their deaths.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh confirmed last week the government’s eight-month old announcement to set up a rehabilitation center for Yemeni returnees from Guantanamo.So far, no accurate details on this center have been revealed, as both Yemeni and US officials declined to provide any.

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the government may continue to detain a 29-year-old Yemeni at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bihani’s attorneys argued that their client was only a cook for the Taliban and never fired a weapon at U.S. forces.

The father of ex-Gitmo detainee Sa’eed Al-Shihri who has seemingly surfaced in Yemen as a senior Al-Qaeda operative despite having had undergone a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia, says his son “is a deviant member of society who must be removed.”

Last year our governor signed an act to amend the California Health and Safety Code relating to controlled substances. He may have saved you from an uncontrollable urge to eat the fresh leaves of an evergreen shrub that might make you feel social and able to relax.

The European Union Election Observation Mission has met Yemeni officials of the ruling and the opposition parties, informing both sides that it would not observe Yemen’s up-coming parliamentary elections if the ruling party would compete alone.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said yesterday that his country had rejected a US proposal to send 94 Yemeni detainees from the military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia to be rehabilitated.

The new regional organization has chosen “Abu Basir” as general, and Sa’id Ali al-Shihri, the released Saudi from Gitmo, as Vice-General. They also plan to release another edition of the e-zine “echo of the battles”

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former Islamic extremists before resurfacing with al Qaeda in Yemen.

Yemen is setting up a center where more than 100 Yemenis are to undergo rehabilitation after their expected release from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, state media reported yesterday. The center is being built in Sanaa with US government assistance, according to the weekly newspaper 26 September, a Defense Ministry mouthpiece.

The National Committee for Defending Sheikh al-Moayad and Zayed has asked the U.S. president Barack Obama to free Sheikh Mohammad al-Moayad and his companion Mohammad Zayed , the Yemeni citizens detained in the United States since 2003.

Saudi Businessman Yasin Al-Qadi began filing a lawsuit in Washington earlier this month (16 January 2008) against US President George Bush. Yasin Al-Qadi’s assets were frozen for 7 years and he was banned from doing business with American citizens after he was, he claims, wrongfully accused of financing terrorism on the basis of false information on 12 October 2001 by the Bush administration.

We the people in Saudi Arabia, Saudis and expats alike, generally weclome the promise of change that your presidency brings for the United States and the rest of the world. Like peoples elesewhere across world, we too celebrate your ascendency as the 44th President of the United States and the first black man to lead the mightiest nation in the world.

The following is a great analysis done by Yemeni-American journalist and friend Munir al-Maweri. Unfortunately, thus far I have only seen it on Sout al-Gnoub and a forum, which will limit its reading in Yemen.

Although there are no charges against American-Yemeni citizen Khalid Al-Sherif, 23, he continues to be detained by the Political Security Organization (PSO). An American of Yemeni origin, Khalid Al-Sherif was detained in June this year while on holiday from the United States where he had been living and studying.

Bahrain intends to push ahead with plans to buy gas from Iran, despite the concerns of the US, an important ally for the small Gulf kingdom, senior officials say.

The security source said investigations and evidence found with members of the cell, including a computer set disclosed correspondence between one of e the cell members, the deputy leader of the cell Basssam Abdullah Fadle al-Haydari and one of the Israeli intelligence sides through which there was a demand for support for carrying out terrorist acts inside Yemen.

An al Qaeda source told al Wasat by telephone that the assassination of Mohammad Rabeysh Kalan was in retaliantion for the killing of four AQ operatives last year. The source also gave up the name of the US embassy bomber, “Mahmoud Saad,” but refused to give more details.

The Islamic finance system, which introduces greater discipline into the economy and links credit expansion to the growth of the real economy, is capable of minimizing the severity and frequency of financial crises, says Umer Chapra, a well-known Saudi economist and winner of the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies.

The Yemeni security forces are hunting suspects in Hodeidah believed to be involved in a terrorist attack on U.S. Embassy in Sana’a last September. Informed sources said the terrorist cell that carried out attack on the US embassy has links to al-Qaeda in neighboring Saudi Arabia and most suspects are from Hodeidah. This information does not go in line with previous official reports that most of attackers are from Hadramout.

Family members of the 17 sailors who died in the 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole will get a chance to attend military commission proceedings against the man charged in the attack under a new Pentagon policy announced Tuesday.

Gen. Colin Powell didn’t just endorse Sen. Barack Obama for President on Sunday. He addressed the racist and xenophobic sentiment behind charges that the senator is a “Muslim” and consorts with terrorists. This has security implications as much it is an issue of civil rights and social justice for Arabs and Muslims in the U.S.. [...]

For those who don’t know the whole saga, the Post has a thorough overview of the U.S.S. Cole bombing and its aftermath. Nothing really new, except some quotes from Yemeni officials. The documents accompanying the article are in interesting read too. Regarding Yemen’s refusal to cooperate with the initial investigation – I know that since [...]

Interesting. The “possibility”…if they hand over all the Cole bombers?

U.S. Navy Yet To Return to Aden

By christopher p. cavas

Once terrorists have chased out United States forces, do those forces go back?

Not in the case of Yemen and the USS Cole.

The Navy confirmed April 10 that no port visits have been conducted in the port of [...]

So it was a high-level request. Interesting that the embassy confirmed Muellers demands for al Badawi (a Yemeni, and therefore unlikely to be handed over) and not ElBaneh, who holds an American citizenship and would presumably be easier to get…of course, I suppose Jaber would have to be locked up first before he could be [...]

Blah Blah Blah… Is this a high-level bid for Elbaneh, or just a goodwill visit? Can’t help but compare Muller’s indication that:

“the strong, united and stable Yemen serves security and stability of the region and the world, expressing admiration of Yemen’s advance in democracy and development.”
To the letter from President Bush delivered by Fran Townsend that [...]

It appears as though al Qaeda influenced elements have attempted to target westerners again. This time, instead of going after the US embassy, they launched mortars at a housing complex in the affluent suburb of Hadda. I know that the there is a secured complex next to the (Best Western) Haddah Hotel (you can see the [...]

So it had nothing to do with security, nor the status of al Badawi in Yemeni custody…only the refusal of Yemen to extradite. This explanation would be convenient for Yemen, as the constitution prohibits extradition - it allows them to throw up their hands and say its not their fault, they’re bound by the constitution. [...]

This story has been in the Yemeni press for a few days now…good to see it was finally picked up by an English paper. From the other reports, it sounded like Seche was trying to explain to the sheikhs how his personal belief carries no weight in an independent judiciary…its not surprising that [...]

So Yemen has decided not to host the conference on Bush’s Mid-East Initiative, “Forum for the Future.” Their official reason involves some sort of technicality with timing. Seriously though, they must think we are all a bunch of hameer - Yemen would jump at the opportunity to host this thing…at any time. All you have to do is [...]