A fugitive Saudi Arabian man, who was once detained at the US military prison at Guantanamo, was named as a senior member of al-Qaeda’s Yemen wing, according to a tape by the group shown on al-Arabiya television yesterday.
The tape also confirmed the deaths of three leaders killed in December and January during Yemeni air raids, the pan-Arab broadcaster said.
Among those killed were Abdullah al-Muhdar, the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen’s Shabwa province, Mohammed Amir al-Awlaki and Mohammed Saleh al-Kazimi.
Othman Ahmed al-Ghamdi, the 31-year-old man named as a leading al-Qaeda operative yesterday, had been added to a list of 85 most-wanted people by Saudi Arabia 15 months ago, al-Arabiya said.
He spent four years in Guantanamo prison after he was captured in Afghanistan. He was released in 2006.
Yemen, neighbor to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, has been a key Western security concern since the Yemen-based al-Qaeda arm claimed responsibility for a failed December attempt to bomb a US-bound passenger plane.
Last month, the group tried to assassinate the British ambassador to Yemen when a suicide bomber threw himself into the path of the convoy taking Tim Torlot to work in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.
The envoy was unharmed and only the suicide bomber died, but the bold hit signaled that a recent crackdown by Sana’a on the global militant group has done little to curb its ambitions to carry out attacks on international targets.
Western countries and Riyadh want Yemen, grappling with a northern Shiite insurgency and southern separatism, to quell its domestic conflicts to turn its focus on fighting al-Qaeda, which they see as a bigger global threat.
Guantanamo prison was set up by former US president George W. Bush in Cuba in 2002 to hold foreigners captured after US forces invaded Afghanistan to root out al-Qaeda and its Taliban protectors in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS