A FORMER Middle Eastern diplomat who is seeking political asylum in Britain has claimed that three British tourists killed in Yemen were the victims of Islamic terrorists with direct links to one of the country’s most senior army leaders.

Ahmed Abdullah al-Hasani alleges that members of Al-Qaeda have infiltrated the highest ranks of Yemen’s military and security forces and were also behind the bombing of the American warship USS Cole, in which 17 sailors died.

Al-Hasani, who was head of Yemen’s navy at the time of the Cole bombing, arrived in Britain with his family 11 days ago. He flew into Heathrow from Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he was Yemen’s ambassador.

His claims, which are unverified, are likely to be of interest to western intelligence agencies and attempts to debrief him are already thought to have begun.

Al-Hasani, 57, fell out with Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, over alleged discrimination towards southern Yemenis and fears he will be assassinated if he goes home.

Last week, he suggested that Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the president’s half-brother and an army commander, may have been linked to the kidnapping of 16 western tourists in December 1998.

The tourists were taken hostage by a group called the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, who used them as human shields during a botched rescue attempt by the Yemeni authorities. Three Britons — Ruth Williamson, Margaret Whitehouse and Peter Rowe — and an Australian were killed in the shootout.

“Two days before the killings, members of the terrorist group were in al-Ahmar’s house in Sanaa (the Yemeni capital),” claimed al-Hasani. “They were also in telephone contact with Sanaa just before the shootings.”

American press reports say al-Ahmar is a former ally of Osama Bin Laden and helped him to recruit Yemenis to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The fighters later set up terrorist training camps in Yemen.

Al-Hasani claims the perpetrators of the USS Cole attack in October 2000 “are well known by the regime and some are still officers in the national army”.

This weekend, the Yemeni authorities dismissed al-Hasani’s claims. “All these allegations are untrue and groundless,” said a government spokesman. “This man is making these allegations in order to legitimise and give significance to his claim of asylum.”

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