News from Yemen
Three Germans — an aid worker based in Yemen and her visiting mother and father — were kidnapped Monday by Bani Dhabyan tribesmen in Dhamar province, located about 65 miles south of San'a.
The kidnappers' leader, Sheik Abed Rabbo Saleh al-Tam, had also demanded the release of a cleric, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, jailed in the United States on terrorism charges.Al-Moayad was sentenced in 2005 in New York to 75 years in prison for supporting terrorism. Al-Moayad was convicted of conspiring to support and attempting to support al-Qaida and the Palestinian extremist group Hamas.
He was lured to Germany by two FBI informants in 2003 and secretly recorded promising to funnel money to Hamas and al-Qaida. He also boasted that Osama bin Laden called him "my sheik." He was arrested by German police and sent to the United States.