The US State Department announced a financial reward for information on Jaber Al-Banna, who is accused by Washington of financing the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda.
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program published, on its Twitter account, Thursday, an announcement of a reward of up to five million dollars for anyone who provides information on (Jaber A. Al-Banna).
The program also said, “The last known location is Yemen, and it is accused of providing material support to the terrorist al-Qaeda organization, which is a foreign terrorist organization under the designation of the United States.”
Jaber Al-Banna, an American wanted by the FBI, is of Yemeni origin, and one of Washington’s most wanted lists.
And the US State Department had previously allocated the same amount of money in 2008, for anyone providing information that would help in the arrest of Al-Banna.
suicide attacks
In 2006, Al-Banna, who was 41 years old at the time, appeared before the Criminal Appeals Court in Sanaa to be tried along with 22 others, accused of orchestrating a series of suicide attacks targeting oil facilities in Hadramawt and Ma’rib, according to the Yemeni newspaper, “Al-Shari’.”
In 2005, a court of first instance in Sanaa issued a sentence on al-Banna, who spent ten years in prison, after convicting him of carrying out car bomb attacks on oil targets in 2003.
Al-Banna was living in New York State, before he left in 2001, among a group of Americans, and Washington intelligence claims that they joined a training camp known at the time as Al-Farouq, affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Escape.. then surrender
In early 2004, the authorities in Yemen were able to arrest Al-Banna. However, two years later, he managed to escape with 22 prisoners in the famous tunnel incident in the Political Security prison in Sana’a.
In 2007, Al-Banna surrendered himself to the Yemeni authorities, after negotiations that lasted for several months, to appear in early 2008 in the first session held to consider his appeal to the ruling of the Court of First Instance.
The Court of Appeal released him for a period to re-imprison him in implementation of the sentence of the Court of First Instance, and this coincided with the renewal of the United States’ request to Yemen to extradite him to it.