A man convicted of masterminding the attack on the American destroyer Cole in 2000 escaped a Yemeni jail through a tunnel with 22 other prisoners, the international police organization, Interpol, said today.
The prisoner, Jamal Ahmed Badawi, was sentenced to death in 2004 by a court in Yemen for his role in the attack on the warship that killed 17 American sailors and provided an early glimpse of the workings of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda global terror network. The Interpol statement said that 12 of the prisoners who escaped through the tunnel with Mr. Badawi were convicted members of Al Qaeda.
Yemeni officials also confirmed to Interpol that a man responsible for the attack on the French tanker Limburg in 2002, Fawaz al-Rabeei, was among those who escaped.
Let me note very simply that dead men do not tunnel their way to freedom. Or kill again.
On the way home, the NPR story got this notion quite wrong when the reporter stated that if you look at the war against terror as a score card of al Qaeda leaders killed or captured, an escape is setback.
Um, no--not quite. Unless the reporter has some news of dead terrorists escaping from Hell.
