Terrorist Attack Waiting to Happen
Feb. 6, 2006— -- An urgent international manhunt is under way across the Middle East and Europe for 23 escaped convicts, including an al Qaeda member who was sentenced to death after he was convicted of masterminding the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in 2000.
Each of the escapees is considered a terrorist attack waiting to happen, especially the ringleader, al Qaeda's Jamil Ahmed Badawi. He planned the attack on the Cole. Two suicide bombers blew up a boat full of explosives next to the destroyer while it was refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.
Badawi was awaiting execution at the time of his escape. It's the second time he has escaped from a prison in Yemen in three years.
"Badawi wasn't a casual participant in USS Cole. He was very active in this," said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent. "He had traveled back and forth to Afghanistan. He had traveled to Saudi Arabia. He had helped purchase the oat, helped [to] rent the house where this was outfitted."
U.S. officials say Badawi was being held at a special prison in the capital city of Sanaa, run by Yemen's intelligence service.
The other escapees, including a dozen other al Qaeda members, escaped with him through a 460-foot-long tunnel that was "dug by the prisoners and coconspirators outside," according to an Interpol statement.
"Now how do you do that unless you've got support inside the building?" Cloonan said. "How do you do that? It's impossible."
Badawi was not the only high-profile terrorist among the escapees. Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeiee, said by Interpol to be one of those behind an attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast in 2002, also escaped. That attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Among other attacks al-Rabeiee is blamed for are an attack on a helicopter carrying Hunt Oil Co. employees and the bombing of a civil aviation authority building.
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