Suspected al Qaeda gun runners caught in Yemen sending arms to Somalia

Reuters:

Yemeni forces have arrested eight foreigners with suspected links to al Qaeda who were smuggling weapons from Yemen to Somalia, a senior Interior Ministry official said on Sunday.

The official said four of the smugglers held Australian passports while a fifth was a Danish national, but gave no details on the identities of the other three.

"The eight foreigners were arrested because they smuggled weapons to Somalia from Yemen," the official said in a statement posted on the state-run news agency Saba.

...

Government sources in the Yemeni capital told Reuters that all of the eight suspects had converted to Islam earlier this year and received religious instruction in Yemen.

...

Al Qaeda and Somalia with its Islamic Courts seem like natural allies. It is a bit of a different twist with converts acting as the go betweens. Perhaps they were concerned about penetration of their organization in Yemen. With these arrest, those concerns look well founded.

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