WORLD> Middle East
Released detainee now Yemen al-Qaida commander
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-24 16:10

According to Pentagon documents, al-Shihri was stopped at a Pakistani border crossing in December 2001 with injuries from an airstrike and recuperated at a hospital in Quetta for a month and a half. Within days of leaving the hospital, he became one of the first detainees sent to Guantanamo.

A view of the Pentagon in September 2007. The Pentagon has said as many as 61 former Guantanamo detainees, about 11 percent of 520 detainees transferred from the detention center and released, are believed to have returned to the fight. [Agencies] 

Al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, provided money to other fighters and trained in urban warfare at a camp north of Kabul, Afghanistan, according to a summary of the evidence against him from US military review panels at Guantanamo Bay.

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An alleged travel coordinator for al-Qaida, he was also accused of meeting extremists in Mashad, Iran, and briefing them on how to enter Afghanistan, according to the Defense Department documents.

Al-Shihri, however, said he traveled to Iran to buy carpets for his store in Riyadh. He said he felt bin Laden had no business representing Islam, denied any links to terrorism and expressed interest in rejoining his family in Saudi Arabia.

Yemen is rapidly re-emerging as a terrorist battleground and potential base of operations for al-Qaida and is a main concern for US counterterrorism officials. Al-Qaida in Yemen conducted an "unprecedented number of attacks" in 2008 and is likely to be a launching pad for attacks against Saudi Arabia, outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden said in November.

The most recent attack, in September, killed 16 people. It followed a March mortar attack and two attacks against Yemen's presidential compound in late April.

The impoverished country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula has a weak central government and a powerful tribal system. That leaves large lawless areas open for terrorist training and operations.

Yemen was also the site of the 2000 USS Cole bombing that killed 17 American sailors. Seventeen suspects in the attack were arrested; 10 of them escaped Yemen's jails in 2003. One of the primary suspects in the attack, Jamal al-Badawi, escaped jail in 2004. He was taken back into custody last fall under pressure from the US government.

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