Sanaa, January 20: Fugitive US-Yemeni imam Anwar al-Awlaqi, suspected by Washington to be linked to the failed Al-Qaeda attack on a US airliner, has said he has no intention of surrendering to Yemeni authorities.
Abdullah Shaea, a Yemeni journalist close to Awlaqi, said on Wednesday that the cleric had made that declaration to him recently.
“Anwar al-Awlaqi told me that no one contacted him and that nothing has been negotiated. He has no intention of giving himself up.”
Shaea is considered in Yemen to be one of the country’s most knowledgeable journalists on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which Washington on Tuesday formally listed as a terrorist group.
“Anwar is at home, protected by his tribe,” Shaea said, without indicating precisely where. “The police and the army know that it is impossible to go and look for him there.
“He is probably under the protection of Al-Qaeda members, not because he is a member but because they are from the same tribe.”
“He has absolutely no confidence in a government that jailed him in 2006 without any charges and freed him after a year and a half without ever trying him.”
A White House aide has directly accused Awlaqi of having links with the man suspected of shooting dead 13 people at a Texas military base in November, Major Nidal Hasan.
US Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan has also said the US-born imam might have had contact with the man who allegedly attempted to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
The prospects of Awlaqi being captured are scant, given Shaea’s description of sentiment in Shabwa after a deadly December 24 air raid there by government forces that killed Al-Qaeda suspects and a number of civilians.
After that raid, on an area controlled by the Awlaqi tribe, people were “furious” throughout the region. “They all went over to the side of Al-Qaeda and prevent anyone from approaching,” Shaea said.
“There was fighting. The government well knows that if it sends forces into the area, they will be beaten. It will not even try. That is why Anwar is safe where he is.”
—Agencies