An Australian woman who converted to Islam and moved to Yemen to raise her children in a Muslim society is being held in prison in Sana'a in connection with alleged al-Qaida activity.
Shyloh Jayne Giddens, 30, has been held without charge in Sana'a's political security prison since 15 May. She was detained with several other foreigners on suspicion of involvement with the al-Qaida branch responsible for the failed attempt to bomb a US airliner on Christmas Day.
Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student responsible for that attack, told US investigators after his arrest that there were "many like me" trained by the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP).
US intelligence officials warned in February that al-Qaida was trying to recruit English-speaking westerners, particularly women, who could easily slip past security controls to launch terrorist attacks.
In March, Colleen LaRose, a blonde, blue-eyed Muslim convert from Pennsylvania who went under the online alias Jihad Jane, was charged with plotting to murder a Swedish cartoonist who drew a controversial picture of the prophet Muhammad.
Gregory Johnson, of Princeton University, said foreign recruits gave al-Qaida a dangerous weapon against the west, and a powerful recruiting tool at home.
"The organisation portrays the foreigners as individuals so enamoured of the global Islamic community and the Arabian peninsula that they are willing to sacrifice their lives.
"AQAP then uses this to publicly shame Yemeni men, asking them, 'Why are foreigners willing to die for you and your lands while you remain silent?'"
According to her lawyer, Abdul Rahman Barman, Gidden – who converted to Islam in Australia – arrived in Sana'a in September 2006 "to raise her two sons in the Muslim community, where she assumed they would grow up with safety, tranquillity and peace of mind". She took a Muslim name, Soumaya Abu Ali, and adopted the black abaya cloak and full face veil worn by most women in Yemen. Like Abdulmutallab, she studied Arabic in one of Old Sana'a's language institutes.
From there she moved to Nahtha, a neighbourhood dominated by the Iman University, a school teaching fundamentalist Islam established by Sheikh Abdel Majed Zindani, Yemen's most powerful cleric and a former mentor of Osama bin Laden.
Abdulmutallab attended lectures at Iman and met Anwar Awlaki, a US-born Yemeni cleric considered by US intelligence to be a leading AQAP recruiter.
The cleric's alleged connections to Abdulmutallab, and the Fort Hood shootings and Times Square bomb prompted President Barack Obama to issue an order for US forces to kill him on sight.
Giddens's Australian passport was cancelled in April because the Australian intelligence service believed she posed a security threat and had "an extremist interpretation of Islam", Barman said.
He said the authorities had not allowed Giddens's children, Omar, seven, and Aminah, five, to leave their house. Neighbours were passing the children food until recently when an Australian woman was allowed in to look after them, he said.
News of the arrest came as al-Qaida threatened to kidnap Saudi princes and ministers to secure the release of a female member held by Saudi authorities. The threat was made in an audiotape by Saeed al-Shehri, a former inmate of Guantánamo Bay, al-Arabiya TV reported.
Haylah al-Qassir, responsible for recruiting women to the group, was one of 113 suspects arrested by the Saudis in March after allegedly planning attacks on oil and security installations.
"Al-Qaida is organising cells to kidnap … princes, ministers and officials including military commanders," said Shehri.
Al-Qaida's online magazine used Qassir's codename, Umm Rabab, and described her as the widow of a fighter killed several years ago. It was the first time the group had acknowledged she was a member. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was formed from a merger between the Saudi and Yemeni branches of Osama Bin Laden's group. Last summer an Aqap suicide bomber posing as a repentant militant tried to kill Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who heads Saudi Arabia's anti-terrorism campaign,