Yaman Capture 50 Al Qaeda Members

Sanaa, TimeIsNews.com - Yaman has been holding about 50 foreigners who allegedly have links with Al Qaeda after intensify supervision over the Arabic schools, reports the newspaper al-Hayat, owned by Saudi Arabia, Monday.

Al-Hayat says that U.S. citizens, UK, France and Malaysia are among the strangers who have been arrested since December failed attempt to bomb a plane to U.S. goals. Nigeria suspects in that case to learn Arabic in the country’s capital, Sanaa.

Western allies of Yemen and Saudi Arabia are worried about Al Qaeda trying to exploit instability in Yemen, to use a poor country, with the domestic conflict in the north and south, as a base to launch attacks in the region and beyond.

Al-Hayat, quoting a Yemeni security source, said one of those arrested is 24-year-old French man who had traveled to Yemen in October from Egypt to learn Arabic, although he was fluent in the language. Yemen, which was praised for the purity of dialect and living expenses that are not expensive, has long been a popular destination for students of Arabic. But in recent years, foreign hard-line followers sometimes come disguised in Yemen to learn Arabic just to join the guerrillas.

Some senior Yemeni officials refused to comment on reports about the arrest. A Yemeni official said Sunday that the government has arrested several U.S. and French students for security reasons but did not mention about the detention of another.

Yemen, alongside the world’s major oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, the West has been a concern since the regional group of Al Qaeda based in Yemen claimed responsibility for bombing the plane of failure. According to Yemeni officials, some Western people who say he was arrested was taken to court.

Sources close to the Yemeni government declared two Americans and one French citizen is estimated to have been detained, but that government officials can not verify it.