Blast rips through court where death was ordered

The condemned man said he killed the missionaries out of a sense of religious duty.
SAN'A, Yemen (AP) -- A bomb exploded today in a Yemeni court where a suspected Al-Qaida militant was condemned to death last week for killing three U.S. missionaries, security officials said. A judge and three other people were wounded.
A man with a pistol arrested in the yard of the courthouse confessed planting the bomb, police said.
The explosion ripped through the courtroom in Jibla, 125 miles south of the Yemeni capital of San'a, officials said.
Judge Hizzam al-Mufaddal, who was not the judge who sentenced the militant, was the most seriously injured victim of today's bombing, police said. Three other people were slightly wounded, and no one was killed, police said.
Witnesses said they saw victims being taken away in ambulances as security officials cordoned off the court building.
Car bombings
The blast came two days after car bombings devastated three foreign residency compounds in Riyadh, the capital of neighboring Saudi Arabia, killing at least 34 people, including seven Americans. Saudi officials on Wednesday linked that attack to Al-Qaida.
On Saturday, the Jibla court condemned to death Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, 30, after convicting him of the Dec. 30 shooting deaths of three American missionaries -- Kathleen A. Gariety of Wauwatosa, Wis., Martha C. Myers of Montgomery, Ala., and William E. Koehn of Kansas. The killings took place at the Southern Baptist-run hospital in Jibla.
Yemeni security officials have said they believe Kamel belonged to a terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida network.
Kamel testified that on the day of the shootings, he walked into the hospital with a semiautomatic rifle hidden under his clothes and opened fire on a staff meeting involving the Americans, firing two shots at each target.
Why he did it
He told the court he killed the missionaries "out of a religious duty ... and in revenge from those who converted Muslims from their religion and made them unbelievers."
Jibla residents have said the Americans never discussed religion. Yemeni law prohibits non-Muslims from proselytizing in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.
Yemeni security officials have said audiotapes bearing the voice of bin Laden had been found at Kamel's house. Police believe Kamel was part of a group plotting attacks against at least eight targets, including foreigners and Yemeni politicians.
Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, but his family comes from Yemen. U.S. officials believe a number of terrorist attacks in Yemen, notably the bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Aden in October 2000, were carried out by Al-Qaida.
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