On kidnapping incidents in Yemen

Yemeni Minister of the Interior Hussein Arab stressed on Monday that two Saudis and six Yemenis are currently being tried in Sanaa, after they were planning to kidnap Americans.

In an interview with the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat the Yemeni minister asserted that this group was planning to carry out a big operation targeting Americans who work at Jableh hospital, southern Sanaa, but the security forces were able to arrest these members before they carried out the operation.

The Yemeni minister told al-Sharq al-Awsat daily that the eight men have relations to the group of Abu al-Hassan al-Mihdar who was strangled in October over kidnapping 16 foreigners and killing four of them.

The group was arrested in May 1999, when al-Mihdar was sentenced to death. The eight men, two of them being tried in absentia (one Saudi and one Yemeni) are accused of forming an armed gang aiming at kidnapping foreigners and forging Yemeni official documents.