Osama bin Laden applauds USS Cole boming

"The investigations are over and we've issued instructions to submit the files to the judiciary," Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said at a press conference.

Saleh said U.S. investigators had requested further police investigation into Mohammed Omar al-Harazi, one of at least three suspects still at large, to find out whether he fled to Afghanistan, where bin Laden is based.

"We cannot confirm that he did. Let them try and confirm," Saleh said.

Al-Harazi, also known as Abdul Rahman Hussein al-Saafani, is suspected of giving telephone orders from the United Arab Emirates during the planning stage of the attack on the U.S. destroyer, and arranging to wire money to cover expenses.

By handing the files to the judiciary, Yemeni authorities are moving the case from police investigators to the chief prosecutor, who will shepherd the case through trial. Yemen is expected to put at least six people on trial; other suspects may be tried in absentia.

It wasn't clear how quickly a trial date would be set.

The Interior Ministry and the prosecution have been meeting for two weeks to plug any holes in the suspect files that could benefit the defense case, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The ministry and prosecution were focusing on suspect confessions, forensic evidence and arrest procedures, officials said.

They said the files of 10 suspects were being discussed, including three at large.

A U.S. government official in Yemen recently told The Associated Press that the trial probably would not take place for at least another two weeks, and denied U.S. authorities considered the timing problematic. The official, who said the U.S. investigation has a long way to go, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Linking bin Laden to the Cole attack is complicated by the secretive, multilayered structure of his Afghanistan-based network. The U.S. official said in February there is "plausible deniability up the food chain. These guys are smart ... and they are giving us quite an investigative challenge."

Until this week, bin Laden had not spoken publicly about the Cole attack. On Thursday, Qatar's satellite television channel, Al-Jazeera, broadcast remarks by bin Laden recorded Monday at a family celebration in Afghanistan.

"In Aden, the young man stood up for holy war and destroyed a destroyer feared by the powerful," bin Laden said. He spoke of the ship as having sailed "to its doom" along a course of "false arrogance, self-conceit and strength."

Shouts of Allahu Akbar, or God is Great, punctuated his reading of the poem, part of which was dedicated to the children of the Palestinian uprising.

One of bin Laden's sons, Hamza, no older than 10, recited a poem questioning the reasons behind the United States' pursuit of his father.

Bin Laden has been indicted by the United States for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Days after the bombings, the United States fired dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles at presumed bin Laden camps in eastern Afghanistan.

Al-Jazeera said bin Laden's mother, two brothers and a sister had flown to Afghanistan for the gathering to celebrate last month's marriage of his son, Mohammed, in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. They arrived on an Afghan plane that was returning from Saudi Arabia, it said.

Bin Laden was shown sitting next to Mohammed, who was flanked by his new father-in-law, Abu Hafas al-Masri, an Egyptian who fought with the elder bin Laden in the 1980s against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Several members of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia and hundreds of armed Arab fighters attended the reception.

The Taliban have refused to surrender bin Laden to the United States, despite U.N. sanctions imposed last month. The Taliban say Washington has not provided proof of his guilt and that it is against Afghan tradition to hand over a guest to his enemies.<