SANAA: A total of 16 Al-Qaeda suspects appeared before a state security court in Sanaa yesterday charged with carrying out a string of attacks, including the killing of two Belgian tourists last year.

The prosecution argued that the suspects, who were arrested on separate occasions between 2007 and 2008, formed an Al-Qaeda cell that masterminded a spate of attacks. The men — 11 Yemenis, four Syrians and a Yemeni with Saudi nationality — stood handcuffed behind bars dressed in blue prison uniforms.

According to the charge sheet read out by prosecutors at the first hearing, the group was behind the attack on Belgian tourists in the southeastern province of Hadramout in January 2008.

Two Belgian women tourists and three Yemeni drivers were killed when gunmen opened fire on their convoy near a historical site in Dowan valley, around 900 kilometers from Sanaa. Another tourist was injured.

The group was also charged with carrying out the March 18, 2008, mortar attack that targeted the US Embassy in Sanaa but missed and instead hit an adjacent school, injuring three police officers and four schoolgirls.

Prosecutors said the group was also responsible for the mortar attack that targeted a residential compound housing US and Western citizens on April 6, 2008. No one was hurt in that attack.

They said the group fired two mortar shells at the Italian Embassy on April 30, again without casualties. The most recent attack blamed on the group was the July 25 car bombing at the police complex in Sayoun city in Hadramout that killed two policemen and wounded 18 others, including seven women.

All those attacks were claimed by Yemen Soldiers Brigades, the local branch of Al-Qaeda.

The defendants were not linked to the car bomb attack on the US Embassy last September that left 17 people dead, including six attackers.

Prosecutors told the court that police had seized explosives and ammunitions, including 25 rockets, 43 bags of gunpowder, six artillery shells, 13 mortar shells and two explosive vests, with the suspects. They said the group acted under instructions from a leading member of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Hamza Al-Quaiti, who was shot dead in a police raid last August.

All the defendants rejected the charges, and some of them said they had confessed under duress and torture. The trial was adjourned until March 17.