SANAA - Thirteen people suspected of links to Al-Qaeda will go on trial in Yemen soon accused of planning attacks, a legal official said on Monday.
"Yemen's prosecutor-general intends from next week to bring before court a new group of 13 members of Al-Qaeda," said the source.
"The group members planned terrorist acts. They will also be prosecuted on other charges, never before made against Al-Qaeda network members, including some linked to immoral activities."
The official was speaking as a Sanaa court held another hearing in the trial of 11 other presumed Al-Qaeda members also charged with planning attacks in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden.
The court adjourned that case after dealing with procedural questions and fixed its next hearing for February 28.
Yemen, which has cracked down on suspected Al-Qaeda members at the behest of the United States, has already tried and convicted two groups of militants over the 2000 bombing of the US navy destroyer Cole in Aden which killed 17 American sailors and the bombing of a French tanker, the Limburg, two years later.
On February 5, the appeals court in Sanaa upheld the death sentence against a Yemeni and sentenced to death another who had been jailed over the bombing of the Limburg and other attacks.
The appeals court will deliver the verdict in the Cole case on February 26.
