Legal Commentary

U.S. and U.K. Close Yemen Embassies

By Jeralyn

The U.S. and U.K. closed their embassies in Yemen due to threats by al Qaida Arabian Peninsula (AQAP.)

The embassy statement is here.

Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan told ABC's This Morning:

“I spoke with our ambassador in Sana, Steve Seche, early this morning and last night, looked at the intelligence that is available as far as the plans for al Qaeda to carry out attacks in Sana, possibly against our embassy, possibly against U.S. personnel,” Mr. Brennan said. “We decided it was the prudent thing to do to shut the embassy.”

[More...]

According to the BBC, Brennan also said.

"This is something that we've known about for a while," he said. "We're determined to destroy al-Qaeda, whether it's in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or in Yemen...."We know that they have been targeting our embassy, our embassy personnel."

On Monday, a statement was posted on the AQAP website, that said:

"We call upon every Muslim who cares about his religion and doctrine to assist in expelling the apostasies from the Arabian Peninsula, by killing every crusader who works at their embassies or other places, declare it an all-out war against every crusader on Mohammad's peninsula on land, air and sea," it said in a statement.

As to the intelligence failure regarding Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his failed Xmas day attack:

US President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said there were several "bits and pieces" of intelligence gathered in the run-up to the botched Christmas Day bombing, and that human or systemic failure lay in not putting together those pieces of a larger puzzle.

"There was no smoking gun. There was no piece of intelligence that said this guy is a terrorist and is going to get on a plane... None whatsoever," Brennan told Fox News Sunday as part of a round of talk-show interviews. "It was a failure to integrate the bits and pieces of information."

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 03, 2010 (boomark / email).