Yemen convicts five over supertanker bombing

A Yemeni court has sentenced five Yemenis to 10 years in jail for the 2002 bombing of the French supertanker Limburg and for …

A Yemeni court has sentenced five Yemenis to 10 years in jail for the 2002 bombing of the French supertanker Limburg and for plotting to assassinate the US ambassador to the Arab state.

The court also sentenced another Yemeni militant to death and nine others to between three and ten years for the assassination conspiracy and for plotting to attack various foreign embassies in Yemen.

A boat packed with explosives rammed into the French supertanker off Yemen setting it on fire, a week before the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US warship USS Cole.

A hole was blown into the side of the 330 metre-long tanker, named the Limburg, the embassy said. Twelve of the 25-man crew had been hospitalised with injuries in the eastern port city of Al-Mukallah.

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Yemen, the ancestral home of al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, has been cooperating with the US-led "war on terror" since the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington - blamed on al Qaeda.