Yemen has detained about 50 foreigners in recent months accused of links to al-Qaeda as it stepped up monitoring of Arabic language institutes in the country, a Saudi-owned Arab newspaper said yesterday.
Al-Hayat newspaper said those held included US, British, French and Malaysian nationals, and that they were detained since a failed December attempt to bomb a US-bound plane. The Nigerian suspect in that case had studied Arabic in Sanaa.
Yemen’s Western allies and Saudi Arabia fear al-Qaeda is trying to exploit instability in Yemen to use the impoverished country, with domestic conflicts in its north and south, as a base to launch attacks in the region and beyond.
Al-Hayat, which cited Yemeni security sources, said one of those arrested was a 24-year-old French man who traveled to Yemen in October from Egypt to study Arabic even though he was already fluent in the language.
Senior Yemeni government officials declined to comment on the report. A Yemeni official had said on Sunday that authorities detained several US and French students on security grounds, but made no mention of further detentions.
Yemen, neighbor to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, has been a key Western security concern since a Yemen-based regional al-Qaeda arm claimed responsibility for the failed December plane bombing.
The Yemeni official said the handful of Westerners he said were being held had been detained at the behest of their own governments, but declined to give details.
A source close to the Yemeni government said two Americans and a French citizen were thought to be held, but the government official could not confirm that. Officials reached at the US and French embassies in Sanaa had no immediate comment.
An Australian woman who had converted to Islam and moved to Yemen had also been reported to be detained in Sanaa on what her lawyer said was suspicion of links to Islamist militants.
The lawyer, Abdel Rahman Barman, identified his client as Shyloh Giddens, and said she was arrested because of her ties to a Bangladeshi woman taken into custody last month over suspicion of links to radical Islamists.
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