Sana’a, Yemen – A total of 16 al-Qaeda suspects appeared before a state security court judge in Sana’a Wednesday charged with carrying out a string of attacks including the killing of two Belgian tourists last year.

The 16 defendants – 11 Yemenis, four Syrians and a Yemeni with Saudi nationality – stood handcuffed behind bars dressed in blue prison uniforms.

According to the charge list, read out by prosecutors at the first hearing, the group was behind the attack on Belgian tourists in the south-eastern province of Hadhramout in January 2008.

Two female Belgian tourists and three Yemeni drivers were killed when gunmen opened fire on their convoy near a historical site in Dowan valley, around 900 kilometres from the capital Sana’a. Another tourist was injured.

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

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 suicide car bombing at the police complex in Sayoun city of Hadhramout that killed two policemen dead and wounded 18 people, including seven women.

Prosecutors told the court that police had seized explosives and ammunitions with the suspects, including 25 rockets, 43 bags of gun powder, six artillery shells, 13 mortar shells, two explosive vests.

They said the group acted under instructions from the leading member of al-Qaeda in Yemen, Hamza al-Quaiti, who was shot dead in a police raid in Hadhramout 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.

Yemen, an impoverished country located on the south-western tip of the Arabian Peninsula, has allied itself with the US-led “war on terror” since the September 11, 2001 attacks. It has since pursued suspected members of al-Qaeda and put scores of them on trial. (dpa)