Yemen to Openly Try Accused Al Qaeda
Tue Apr 13, 2004 02:37 PM ET
By Ayla Jean Yackley
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Yemen will give al Qaeda suspects an open trial as it
struggles to balance security with civil liberties, the Yemeni human rights
minister said in an interview Tuesday.
The Arab state has co-operated closely with the United States in its "war on terror" and arrested hundreds of people suspected of ties with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States in an effort to shed its image as a hotbed for militants.
Suspected al Qaeda members killed 17 U.S. servicemen in a suicide attack on the destroyer Cole in a Yemen port in 2000. The group was also believed to be behind an attack on the French supertanker Limburg in 2002.
International human rights groups have criticized Yemen, the Saudi-born bin Laden's ancestral homeland, for the mass arrests, incommunicado detentions, torture and forcible deportations.
"Most of the detainees have been delivered to the judiciary, so we are not seeing the issue of detainees being kept from the law as much," Amat al-Aleem Alsoswa, Yemen's first human rights minister, told Reuters at an Istanbul conference.
"Those who have already been (charged) will receive a trial open to the public. Yemen does not have martial law or, for that matter, a separate judiciary for security (cases)," she said.
Amnesty International said in a report on Yemen last year "the government sacrificed human rights and sidelined the rule of law" to meet international pressure to rein in militancy.
Suspects in the Cole bombing had been detained for two years without formal charges or access to lawyers, Amnesty said.
Alsoswa acknowledged that the rights of some detainees had been breached in the post-September 11th round-ups in Yemen, a poverty-stricken nation at the tip of the Arabian peninsula.
"Holding people without presenting their case to the judiciary is considered a violation of the law, but balancing security with the question of human rights has not been easy and, unfortunately, hasn't always been answered appropriately."
Alsoswa said her ministry, set up last year, has been working with government authorities to ensure suspects receive fair trials. "They are helping to ensure that," she said.
"We are a bit relieved, but the whole question hasn't been solved yet because there is still the problem of terrorism.
"At the same time we are trying our best to guarantee those people their basic rights and their right to have clear and open cases, to have an open trial," she said.
Alsoswa also said the government has worked to create "a dialogue to speak with fanatics" to discern between non-violent ideologues and militants. "A big number of people have been freed after it was found that there was no sort of (militancy)."
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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