2002 Attacks and Plots
Whether foiled, aborted, or merely incorrect specific intelligence, the February 12, 2002 attack never occurred. However, there were a number of plots and attacks in Yemen which followed later that year, which involved the al-Rabeei cell.
In al-Rabeei's later trial, charges included the October 2002 bombing of the Limburg, a French oil tanker, and a plot to kill the United States Ambassador in Yemen.
Two suicide bombers rammed an explosive-laden boat into the oil tanker, killing a Bulgarian crew member and spilling 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden. This operation was very similar to the attack on the American destroyer USS Cole two years earlier. Saudi born Abdulraheem al-Nashiri, prime suspect of the USS Cole bombing (currently in the US custody), paid $40,000 to fund the Limburg attack. With that money, the former Al Qaida leader Abu Ali al-Harithi bought the explosives and transported them from his house in Shabwa to Mukalla in Hadramut. Later in 2002, Al-Harithi was killed by the CIA with a missile fired from a Predator drone.
Al-Rabeiee's conviction also included the detonation of explosives at a civil aviation authority building in April 2002 and then after the Limburg attack, the attack on a helicopter carrying Hunt Oil Co. employees in November 2002.
By February 2, 2003, the FBI rearranged its entire wanted lists on its web site, into the current configuration. Al-Rabeiee was one of the remaining eight Yemen plot suspects archived to a linked page titled, "February 2002, Seeking Information Alert". Around this time the FBI also changed the name of the list, to the FBI "Seeking Information - War on Terrorism", to distinguish it from its other wanted list of "Seeking Information," which the FBI already uses for ordinary fugitives, those who are not terrorists.
Read more about this topic: Fawaz Al-Rabeiee
Famous quotes containing the words attacks and/or plots:
“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“‘O opportunity! thy guilt is great,
‘Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason;
Thou set’st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
Whoever plots the sin, thou point’st the season;
‘Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason;
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
Sits Sin to seize the souls that wander by him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)