Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr sent a message Wednesday to his Yemeni counterpart, Abu Bakr al-Qurba, asking for a status update on the four Egyptians who were arrested in Yemen on suspicion of belonging to Al-Qaeda.
Amr requested that he be kept informed regarding the investigations into the four individuals, and stressed that they should be returned to Egypt as soon as possible, said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Amr Roshdy.
The Yemeni Defense Ministry had announced Tuesday that security forces arrested 14 Al-Qaeda militants, including nine foreigners, who were suspected of plotting a series of attacks.
The militants were allegedly planning to target the army and civil leaders, as well as sites of foreign interest, the ministry claimed.
The suspects are thought to have been working in three groups, the biggest of which was allegedly intending to focus on fighting the army in the south of Yemen, an area that had until recently been under Al-Qaeda control, the ministry continued.
Details regarding the timing and place of the arrests were not given, but the Defense Ministry did state that among the arrested were four Egyptians, two Jordanians, one Somali, one Tunisian and one individual from Dagestan, a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus region.
Edited translation from MENA
