YEMEN: SIX SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR SPATE OF ATTACKS

July 13, 2009: A Yemeni court sentenced six suspected Al-Qaeda militants to death for a spate of deadly attacks on government and Western targets in the impoverished country.
Another 10 other defendants, including four Syrians and a Saudi, were sentenced to between eight and 15 years in jail on the same charges.
The 16 were convicted of carrying out 13 armed attacks over the past two years on foreign targets, government establishments and oil facilities in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
These include a January 2008 attack that killed two Belgian women tourists, a March 2008 attack targeting the US embassy and a rocket strike on a compound housing American oil workers.
The sentences can be appealed, but the convicts did not declare in court if they will formally challenge the verdicts. (Sources: AFP, 13/07/2009)