The Yemen courts have sentenced six al Qaeda terrorists to death and the rest of their jihadi plotters and terrorists got up to 15 years in prison in a dramatic crescendo of what has been sustained al Qaeda terror on the Arab nation. Here's the story from Breitbart:
Six Yemenis sentenced to death for spate of attacks
A Yemen court on Monday sentenced six suspected Al-Qaeda militants to death for a spate of deadly attacks on government and Western targets in the impoverished country.
Another 10 other defendants, including four Syrians and a Saudi, were sentenced to between eight and 15 years in jail on the same charges.
The 16 were convicted of carrying out 13 armed attacks over the past two years on foreign targets, government establishments and oil facilities in Yemen, ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
These include a January 2008 attack that killed two Belgian women tourists, a March 2008 attack targeting the US embassy and a rocket strike on a compound housing American oil workers.
The defendants chanted "God is great" after the verdicts were announced in the court, which specialises in dealing with terror cases.
"We will liberate the land of Islam between Hadramut (southeastern Yemen) and the Sham (Syria)," they shouted.
The sentences can be appealed, but the convicts did not declare in court if they will formally challenge the verdicts.
Three of the defendants had in the previous hearing pleaded innocent of the charges against them and demanded recompense for moral and financial harm they said they had incurred.
The others have also previously denied the charges levelled against them.
Yemen has witnessed a number of attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda in recent years against foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.
The latest attack claimed by the group in March targeted a South Korean delegation investigating an earlier suicide bombing that killed four compatriots at the historic eastern mud-brick city of Shibam.
In March last year, a schoolgirl and a policeman were killed when a bomb struck a girls' school near the US embassy. The US State Department said then that the bomb attack was targeting its mission in Sanaa.
The US embassy in the capital was also targeted last September by a double car bombing claimed by Al-Qaeda that killed 19 people, including seven attackers.
US media reports last month said dozens of Al-Qaeda fighters and some of the extremist group's leaders were shifting from their haven in Pakistan's tribal areas to Yemen due to US military pressure.
Yemen categorically dismissed the claims insisting that it was not a safe haven for the Islamist militants.
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