Yemen may get key data from Al Ahdal

Yemen said yesterday it hopes to glean crucial data about Al Qaida operations inside and outside the state after catching a senior Al Qaida suspect wanted for links to the 2000 bombing of the US warship Cole.

Mohammed Hamdi Al Ahdal, also known as Abu Asem Al Makki, headed Yemen's wanted list for nearly two years before he was caught by security forces on Tuesday in the capital - handing Yemen a major coup in its campaign against militants.

"This is an important arrest because the information we may uncover during investigations could lead to elements or networks even outside Yemen," the Yemeni government official said.

"We will probably get important information about his ties with other elements because he played a leading role and was the main link in distributing funds (to Al Qaida members)," he said.

Ahdal's capture comes after deadly suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and Turkey this month, blamed on Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida network, and threats of more attacks against US allies. On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia said it foiled a car bombing in the capital Riyadh and killed two terrorists.

Yemen's official Saba news agency said Ahdal was one of the "most prominent leaders of the Al Qaida network" in Yemen, the ancestral home of Saudi-born bin Laden.

"We received information around three weeks ago that Ahdal was in Sanaa and we started tracing him until we slowly surrounded him by planting intelligence agents in neighbouring houses," another Yemeni government official said.

A US counter-terrorism official said Ahdal had been among the top 20 to 25 Al Qaida leaders still at large and called his capture significant. He said Ahdal had a lot of contacts in Al Qaida.

Yemen named Ahdal in December 2001 as Al Qaida suspect number two behind Ali Qaed Senyan Al Harthi, who was killed by a missile fired by an unmanned CIA plane in Yemen a year ago.

Harthi and his aide, Ahdal, were key suspects in the Cole bombing in Yemen's Aden harbour which killed 17 U.S. sailors.

The counter-terrorism official said Ahdal had significant combat experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s and in Bosnia in the 1990s and had a key role in moving Al Qaida money around. Diplomats said he was long protected by powerful tribal leaders in rugged mountain regions.

Yemeni opposition Web site Al Sahwa said Ahdal's left leg was severed below the knee from his days of combat in Russia's Chechnya region and that he had been fitted with an artificial limb. It said he is partly paralysed in his left arm.

Saudi Arabia's Al Watan newspaper said on Tuesday that Ahdal had been detained in Saudi Arabia in 1999 for 14 months and then handed over to Yemen. It did not say why he was detained.

Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Yemen, both battling militants, have tightened control of their border.

Triple suicide bombings in Riyadh in May fuelled cooperation and swaps of Al Qaida suspects. The weapons used in the attacks are suspected to have been smuggled from Yemen.

Sanaa has worked closely with the US war on terror to shed its image in the West as a haven for militants.