Monday Papers: or the Tarim Cell

Yemen’s Special Terrorism Court, not to be confused with its Special Court for the Media, announced today that it had sentenced six al-Qaeda suspects to death and the remaining 10 of the suspects to between 8 and 15 years in prison.

The Arabic reporting is labelling these guys as the “Tarim Cell,” which is fine as far as that goes if one overlooks the fact that the majority of them were not actually captured with the Tarim cell when it was brought down on August 11-12 2008.

It is often difficult to keep things straight in Yemen, but much of the reporting on the cell is claiming they were responsible for everything from the attack on the Belgian tourists in Hadramawt in January 2008 to the assault on the US Embassy in September 2008, which again is fine as long as one overlooks the fact that some of these men, including those sentenced to death, were actually in government custody in September 2008 when the attack on the US Embassy took place.

This story, on the other hand, does a fairly good job of discussing the attacks the accused actually may have been involved with. And finally here is al-Sahwa’s report for a bit more detail on the case, as well as the men’s names.

Also, for those who have expressed doubt that Salih actually reads Waq al-waq, here is the text of his speech to the group from Radfan that the al-Sharq al-Awsat article mentioned the other day – feel free to parse away.