 The Yemeni government arrested al-Quso within the first weeks of the attack on the USS "Cole", but refused to allow the FBI to interrogate him.When FBI interrogators asked to speak with al-Quso about the Cole attack, Yemeni authorities stated that al-Quso had "sworn on the Koran that he was innocent of any crime" which apparently proved to Yemeni officials that he was innocent.It took FBI officials months of persistent requests before they were allowed to interrogate al-Quso, at which point he identified 11 September hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khaled al-Mihdhar in photographs taken in Malaysia.