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Yemen prison escapees now on FBI’s most wanted terrorist list | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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WASHINGTON (AP) – Two recent escapees from a Yemeni terrorist prison were added on Thursday to the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists.

Jamal al-Badawi and Jaber Elbaneh were part of a group of 23 al-Qaeda prisoners who escaped Feb. 3 from a detention center in San`a, Yemen, through a 180-yard(164-meter)-long tunnel that surfaced in a mosque. The State Department is offering a $5 million (¤4.18 million) reward for their capture.

Al-Badawi has been indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for plotting, preparing and helping to carry out the attack on Oct. 12, 2000, on the destroyer USS Cole. The attack killed 17 American sailors in the Yemeni port of Aden. Elbaneh was indicted in Buffalo, New York, for providing material support to al-Qaeda by attending the al-Farooq training camp run by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Elbaneh was allegedly part a sleeper cell in Lackawanna, New York, a Buffalo suburb, whose members attended the training camp. The Yemeni-born Elbaneh was arrested in Yemen in 2003.