A hearing into an appeal by four Yemenis convicted of a dynamite attack against the British embassy in Aden last October has been postponed indefinitely amid a shake-up of the judiciary, court sources said.
Yemen has lately been struggling to lock down a somewhat shaky security situation, which besides domestic incidents of terrorism has witnessed numerous kidnappings of foreigners.
The hearing on the British bombing case, which had been due to take place Sunday, was put off following the transfer of presiding judge Abdallah Farwan to another post, the sources told AFP.
His transfer was part of wide-ranging changes in the top echelons of the judiciary under which 20 judges were dismissed last week for "infringing [on] the law."
The dismissals were ordered by Yemen's higher judicial council.
The appeals case opened on August 22 and the prosecutor had on August 26 requested the presence of one of the four defendants, who was simultaneously standing trial in a court in the southern port city of Aden for a separate bomb attack in December 2000.
The four defendants had appealed their July 22 conviction, by a special terrorism court, to prison sentences of four to 15 years for the attack against the British embassy in the Yemeni capital.
The court found them guilty of "carrying out criminal acts designed to undermine the country's security, harm others and damage their property."
They were also ordered to pay unspecified compensation for the damage caused by the blast, in which no one was hurt.
The trial opened last February in a criminal court, which decided it could not handle the case and referred it to the special terrorism court.
Abu-Bakr Said Ahmed Jaioul and Ahmed Massoud Ali Mosharaf were each sentenced to 15 years, while Sallam Salem Abu-Jahel and Faris Taher received jail sentences of six and four years, respectively.
All four said they were not affiliated to any political group and acted merely in retaliation for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, according to the agency.
Abu Jahel had confessed that he worked for Yemeni intelligence.
"I have been an employee of the political police for a year and a half," he said during a court hearing in late July.
"I received a monthly salary of 13,500 riyals ($80), but I had no work to do," he had said.
The embassy attack, in which TNT was tossed over the compound's wall, damaged the embassy but left no one injured. It came a day after a bomb attack on the USS Cole warship in the southern port of Aden, leaving 17 US sailors dead – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
