F.B.I.'s Inquiry in Cole Attack Nearing a Halt

By John F. Burns
Tuesday, August 21, 2001

SANA, Yemen, Aug. 17 — More than 10 months after two Arabic- speaking suicide bombers attacked the destroyer Cole in Aden, killing 17 American sailors, an F.B.I. investigation has virtually ground to a halt because Yemen has refused repeated American requests to widen the inquiry to include Islamic militant groups in Yemen.

The effect of the Yemeni decision has been to frustrate efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to link the bombing conclusively to Osama bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi, who has declared a worldwide "holy war" on the United States.

After the Cole bombing on Oct. 12, F.B.I. investigators immediately suspected that Mr. bin Laden, from a sanctuary in Afghanistan, had inspired the attack, if not actively directed it. But appeals from senior American officials, several of whom have flown to Yemen to appeal directly to President Ali Abdallah Salih, have been unavailing.

Senior bureau investigators say Yemen has denied them access to prominent Yemenis whom the Americans want to interview in their bid to link the attack to elements of Mr. bin Laden's network in Yemen, which became a key base for him in the early 1990's.

Now, senior Yemeni officials have indicated that they plan to close the case by trying six men who were arrested soon after the bombing.

"Yemen is as committed to combating terrorism as the United States," the foreign minister, Dr. Abu Bakr al-Qurbi, said in an interview, "because the damage caused in the Cole attack was not only to the American ship and its crew, but to Yemen's security, too. It is therefore in our interests to trace the attack to its ultimate source, and I don't think that any wise person can say that Yemen is withholding information.

"But as things stand now, we believe that the investigation is complete, and that it is time to hand over the file in the case to the prosecutor."

Dr. Qurbi said additional interviews proposed by the F.B.I. would be a breach of Yemen's sovereignty because they would involve strictly domestic matters. In any case, he said, Yemen's investigation, including the questioning of some individuals cited by the bureau, had shown convincingly that there were no Yemenis involved in the bombing other than those held in Aden.

"Just because you have an Islamic connection does not mean that you have any relationship to the Cole bombing," he said.

Since November the government has repeatedly said it wanted to hold the trial, only to defer it under American pressure. The F.B.I. position has been that the men jailed in Aden were minor players and that a trial in Yemen now could prejudice any later trial in the United States of those who planned and financed the attack.

The impasse has its roots in the first days of the Cole investigation, when the bureau complained of obstructionism by Yemen. But after President Clinton demanded a "genuine joint investigation," the Americans were eventually allowed to attend interviews with suspects and witnesses identified by the Yemenis and pose questions.

But sources inside the F.B.I. say much about the way the Yemenis have conducted the investigation has been troubling.

The core of the dispute lies in possible links between the bombing and a wide array of militant Islamic groups in Yemen. In the late 1980's Mr. bin Laden, with American encouragement, recruited widely among young Yemenis for the guerrilla struggle against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Although he was born in Saudi Arabia, Mr. bin Laden's ancestral homeland is in Yemen.

A list of individuals the investigators would like to interview, first presented to Yemen late last year, includes a firebrand Muslim cleric, an army general with family ties to President Salih and a long-standing relationship with Mr. bin Laden, and others with similar links, including a tribal leader who trained as an Afghan guerrilla with Mr. bin Laden.

When the Afghan struggle ended, some of those men helped Mr. bin Laden set up a terrorist network in Yemen, using thousands of Afghan war veterans who later supported President Salih's forces in a civil war against Communist secessionists in 1994.

Bureau investigators say they have little doubt that the six men held by Yemen, in a grim, neon-lit fortress on the Aden waterfront, were involved in the Cole bombing — helping to acquire both a fiberglass skiff and a four-wheel-drive vehicle, installing explosives in the skiff and obtaining false documents used by the conspirators.

But those Americans say the prisoners were just henchmen, not the men who directed the bombing.

With Mr. bin Laden untouchable for now in Afghanistan, the F.B.I.'s view is that a wider inquiry in Yemen is crucial to learn how the Cole bombing was organized, and to deepen the bureau's understanding of Mr. bin Laden's terrorist organization, Al Qaeda.

In a videotape made by Mr. bin Laden that was posted on the Internet this summer, he appeared to claim credit for the Cole bombing, saying that Allah "made us victorious the day we destroyed the ship on the sea." But there was little else on the tape to substantiate the claim.

A leading Yemeni newspaper editor said American pressures ran counter to Yemen's interest in striking a balance between improved relations with Washington and popular backing for Mr. bin Laden's attacks. Closer American ties in the late 1990's yielded increased American aid, and the port refueling agreement that brought the Cole into Aden.

"It was clear from the start that the accessories to the attack would be tried, convicted and executed, but that the people inside Yemen who financed it, and used their power to facilitate it, would never be brought to book," the newspaper editor said, in remarks made on a guarantee of anonymity.

"That's the way things are done here, and the Americans were naïve to imagine that it could ever have been any other way."

American investigators have long suspected that Yemen planned to follow the pattern set by Saudi Arabia after Islamic militants mounted the truck bombing in 1996 at the Khobar Towers military housing, which killed 19 Americans.

After denying the F.B.I. access to suspects in the bombing, Saudi Arabia tried and executed them.

Dr. Qurbi, the foreign minister, implied that Yemen's refusal to allow a wider inquiry was partly the bureau's fault because the F.B.I. had refused to tell Yemen what it had learned about any connection between the Cole and Mr. bin Laden.

"Maybe there is an element of distrust in their not wanting to pass on information to us about bin Laden, in case the information is abused," he said.

American investigators also believe that some of the suspects and witnesses they have been allowed to interview were thoroughly coached in Yemeni jails before meeting the F.B.I. That assertion was vigorously denied by Dr. Qurbi, who said, "This kind of allegation alienates any kind of cooperation between the two sides."

As for Yemen's determination to hold a trial soon, the foreign minister said it was a question of "human rights" to take prisoners to court after their many months in jail.

"Some of our people are becoming very critical of our delay in holding a trial, because it involves a country which is always strongly demanding the protection of human rights," he said.

For months Yemeni officials have said the only bin Laden link to the Cole bombing they have uncovered involved Muhammad al-Harazi, a Saudi Arabian citizen of Yemeni parentage who has been identified by the Yemenis as the man who oversaw preparations for the Cole attack, then left Yemen before the bombing.

F.B.I. officials say that Mr. Harazi is now in Afghanistan, and that he has links not only to the Cole bombing but also to the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa, which killed 224 people.

Another sign that Yemen might not be keen to help the bureau link the Cole bombing to Mr. bin Laden emerged earlier this year.

American officials placed full- page announcements in Yemeni newspapers advertising a $5 million State Department reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the Cole attack. But the Telecommunications Ministry changed the telephone numbers given in the announcement — for the American Embassy here — twice in one month. Each time, the reward had to be announced afresh in the newspapers, with the new numbers.