Samir Abduh Sa'id Al-Maktawi - 2002 Yemen Attacks and Plots

2002 Yemen Attacks and Plots

Whether foiled, aborted, or merely incorrect specific intelligence, the February 12, 2002 attack never occurred. However, other attacks and plots in Yemen soon followed.

In April 2002, there was the detonation of explosives at a civil aviation authority building in Yemen.

There was also an unsuccessful plot that year to kill the United States Ambassador in Yemen.

In October 2002, two suicide bombers rammed an explosive-laden boat into the Limburg, a French oil tanker, killing a Bulgarian crew member and spilling 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden. This operation was very similar to the attack on the American destroyer USS Cole two years earlier. Saudi born Abdulraheem al-Nashiri, prime suspect of the USS Cole bombing (currently in the US custody), paid $40,000 to fund the Limburg attack. With that money, the former Al Qaida leader Abu Ali al-Harithi bought the explosives and transported them from his house in Shabwa to Mukalla in Hadramut. Later in 2002, Al-Harithi was killed by the CIA with a missile fired from a Predator drone.

And then after the Limburg attack, there was an attack on a helicopter carrying Hunt Oil Co. employees in Yemen in November 2002.

By February 2, 2003, the FBI rearranged its entire wanted lists on its web site, into the current configuration. Al-Maktawi was one of the remaining eight Yemen plot suspects archived to a linked page titled, "February 2002, Seeking Information Alert". Around this time the FBI also changed the name of the list, to the FBI "Seeking Information - War on Terrorism", to distinguish it from its other wanted list of "Seeking Information," which the FBI already uses for ordinary fugitives, those who are not terrorists.