Armies of Liberation

from Jafariya News the largest Shia news website in the world.

Sayyed Assam Al-Imad, Chief of Supreme Shiia Council in Yemen, has revealed to Iranian news agency IRNA the crimes that were committed against Shiias in the country and the Yemeni government-imposed complete media darkness over this.

According to Sayyed Al-Imad, elements of ousted Saddam regime that fled from Iraq are working in the Yemeni military, and that they began their work as military advisors in the army one year back.

He added that these military men advised Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh to kill Shiias in the country as did Saddam in Iraq. He said the Yemeni government acting upon this advice issued orders to tear and burn all Shiia books including Nahj-ol Balagha – a compilation of sermons and sayings of holy Prophet (p)’s cousin and son-in-law and caliph of Muslims Imam Ali bin Abi Talib (p) – and As-Sahifah As-Sajjadiyah – a collection of supplications of holy Prophet (p)’s fourth infallible descendant Al-Imam Ali bin Al-Hussein Zain-ol Abideen (p) which is also known as Psalms of Aal-i-Muhammad (p).

Then they go on to quote extensively my World Press.org article, (Yemen 11) without using my name. It was funny I started reading and thinking : oh good somebody else is finally figuring it out. Then I realize its me. So I sent them Yemen 12 and all the footnotes for both. And good regards from the American conservatives. Update: They published the footnotes as a letter to the editor. Good. I want somebody bigger than me to steal the story. Im very happy they did that.

Hopefully they’ll get up to speed on the al-Qaeda sponsored Ba’athist training camps in Yemen for terrorists to back to Iraq and target Shia civilians and US troops.

Perfect together: Yemen and North Korea are to sign a memo of understanding to improve trade between the two countries.

I figured I’d put this here and hope somebody will steal it and use it. Maybe one of those lefty journalists. I have to update it though and include the newest research. But anyone who “borrows” this list has to know that the Yemenis are a nice people who want a real democracy not that pathetic shell that covers up the tyranny now.

islamists: http://www.iric.org/f3t5.asp

144 terrorist bank accounts: http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2005/vol2/html/42395.htm

reformer arrested: http://www.yobserver.com/news_6746.php
much more, click here (Read on …)

Update: My response to the article was published by the Yemen Times here. I appreciate the opportunity they gave me to reply.

Update 2: Apparently the article was snuck past the editors. The Yemen Times published a beautiful article about my journalistic standards with an apology and its here.

Original post: Full page article trashing me in the Yemen Times. This is the headline: Jane Novak a docile pupil of a monkey monk

This is the article that irked the regime at Front Page, also about six other places. This I think is the most complete version. )

I already got the first message, from Robert at Jihad Watch:
“Yes, this is bigger than anything I’ve seen for awhile. Congratulations!”

More BS propaganda from the King of Spin:

Just when former Amb Hasani starts talking about al-Qaeda in the top leadership of Yemeni government and security forces, just as the Iraqi generals hired by the Yemeni military come to light, just as intelligence reports surface of Yemeni al-Qaeda sponsored training camps for Ba’athists to go fight our guys in Iraq, Saleh pulls out these three Iraqi guys. Who were in jail already for two years. Now he’s going to try them (and convict them) and call it cooperation in the WOT.

While all the other Saddam people in Yemen continue their work.

WT: Sanaa, Yemen, May. 29 (UPI) — Yemeni judicial sources said Sunday three Iraqi intelligence officers from the former Saddam Hussein regime are to be tried in a terrorism court.

A court official said the three men will be tried next week on charges of involvement in plotting to blow up the American and British embassies in Sanaa.

On condition of anonymity, he said the former intelligence officers were accused of forming “an armed gang aimed at destabilizing the security of the country and planning terrorism acts against foreign targets.”

The source said Yemeni authorities arrested the three Iraqis two years ago and found plans for their attacks, official documents issued by the former Iraqi regime and explosives.

The official did not say why the suspects had been held without trial for the past two years.

In theory, Saleh pardoned the al-Houthi rebels. These two clerics were charged with not fighting with them but “affiliation” to them. One recieved the death penalty, the other eight years in jail. These guys lawyers quit the case to protest the fact that they weren’t allowed access to the “evidence.”

So Saleh is going to kill him using the tools of the state, and back off the world by calling them linked to Iran and fabricating evidence. The best of all red herrings for the west is Iran. But there’s no actual evidence: no available documents, no wire taps, no money trail. He just says “Iran” and the world swallows it. This is the same court that sentenced the judge Lugman to 10 years in jail for denouncing the violence in Sa’ada. That they called “sedition.” Yemeni human rights groups and his lawyers have all immediately denounced this death penalty verdict as politically motivated and unjust. I’ll take their assesment over Saleh’s and his cronies anyday.

Saleh is the head of the judiciary and its his personal tool. The state is the enemy of the people, especially people who criticize it. I don’t know how the people inside Yemen stay rational in the face of such infuriating injustice.

YO: A preacher has received the death sentence and another been given an eight-year jail term for collaborating with the rebel leader Hussein Al-Houthi, killed last year, and maintaining contacts with a foreign country.

more press reports below, the world takes Saleh at his word, the word of a tyrant, a thief, a murderer: (Read on …)

I need this here: Study Guides

PM, al-bab, rescue, gov.uk

The Eritrean Center for Strategic Studies points out some kind of web in this 2002 report: The trio states of Sana’a axis, namely Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, maintain strong ties, one way on another, with terrorism, either through state terrorism or by providing all sorts of support to the elements that have strong connections with Al-Qa’ida organization led by Osama Bin Ladin.

So I have to check this out later and now its only a link dump. Highlights on the Yemen section:

The Yemeni regime pretends that it combats terrorism, hypocritically acts as the town crier calling on its Yemeni terrorists to “announce repentance, abandon evildoing” on the one hand, and sheltering, training, arming and supporting Eritrean terrorist element on the other.

The tribal base (Hashed), the tribal branch (Senhan) and the village (Al-Ahmer) — this is the triangle of Hashed-Senhan-Al-Ahmer which has an iron grip on the political, military, security and economic situation in Yemen, through the “General Popular Conference” led by the head of the state, General Ali Abdella Salih, and the “Yemeni Alliance for Reform” (Al-Islah party) chaired by Sheik Abdella Bin Hussein Al-Ahmer.

Both domestic and external Yemeni events for several years now indicate that the ruling “General Popular Conference” party in Sana’a had been penetrated by the Al-Qa’ida organization. As a proof, the member of the Central Committee for the party of President Ali Abdella Salih and the head of the political security apparatus, Abdul Salam Ali Abdul-Rahman had been identified by both the Arab and western intelligence circles to be an active member of Al-Qa’ida organization, implicated in various terrorist operations before his capture and arrest in September 2002.

by some new mysterious newspaper. YT:

The above-mentioned newspaper had published on its back page a host of unseemly accusations against honor and conduct of the journalist Hujaira, chairwoman of Yemeni Female Media Forum.

The journalists gathered at the headquarters of the YJS have emphasized their rejection and denunciation of those means targeting bearers of free and honest pens, confirming their limitless solidarity with journalist Hujaira.

Targeting her honor? That’s nasty. Especially, I think, in Yemen. It’s not New York. There seems to be no limits to the lows that the sleezy dirtbag Yemeni government will go to in targeting the couragous and upstanding journalists there. (Read on …)

Adding some detail to the 5/8 post, Where have all the murdering bastards gone?

Sanaa, 25 May (AKI) – Yemen is home to training camps for exiled members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, reports the Iranian agency Mehr, citing high-ranking sources from the Yemeni government. One government member confirmed that the camps are run by subversive elements from Yemen’s secret services. Several former Iraqi troops sought refuge in the Arab country after the fall of Saddam, writes Mehr, where they obtained political and financial support.

The revelations have been partly confirmed by the former Yemeni ambassador to Syria, Ahmed Abdullah al-Hasani, who recently requested political asylum in London. A former commander of Yemen’s navy, al-Hasani has already talked about many officers from the army, police and secret services being members of groups linked to al-Qaeda, the terror network headed by Osama bin Laden.

“It doesn’t surprise me that the al-Qaeda supporters in our security forces and the Republican Guard have also provided political support and military training to the Iraqi Baathists,” al-Hasani told the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Watan.

Yemen is a key partner in the “war on terror” and is trying to rid itself of its reputation as a haven for Islamic militants, but it is also a very poor, tribal society, where the government struggles to maintain control over all its territory. It is also trying to quell a rebellion by Shiites in the north of the country. (no)

So regarding these training camps, where do the graduates go? Back to Iraq? To target our troops and Iraqi kids?

I’m sorry. I can’t believe it. I can’t keep up with the propaganda spin. I’m dizzy. “However, (Saleh) laid down the condition that the leaders and their followers repent their racist thoughts.” YO They should repent? their racist thoughts?

Also, a visit to Yemen from the North Korean Foreign Trade Minister? I thought the only thing North Korea had to trade was illegal weapons. Time to buy some more scuds from Kim Jung Il? Ansar al-Sunna running low on morters? al-Qaeda in Gaza needing a restock? Used up all the bombs in Sa’ada? (In 2002, the US intercepted a Yemeni ship containing North Korean scud missiles, conventional warheads, and nitric acid.)

update; an older article on the murder of the socialist leader (link dump): Jarallah immediately blasted the verdict as unfair, saying the killing was part of a “holy war” against apostates and infidels. “I killed a man who did not want Islamic law to be in use,”

sorry, the links at al-Sahwa expire and I’m going to need this article in the future:

21/5/2005

Huge blast rocks YSP headquarters in Hodiedah

Al-Sahwa net- A massive explosion on Saturday rocked the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) headquarters in Hodiedah city, well-informed sources reported. (Read on …)

In 2004, the US Treasury designated Zindani as a “Major Terrorist” for his active support of al-Qaeda. Zindani, according to the US, influences and supports “many terrorist causes.” He is also noted as a contact for Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group which contains the faction Ansar al-Sunna operating in Iraq. Ansar al-Sunna has claimed responsibility for the beheading of 12 Nepalese hostages and for the explosion at a US military base in Mosel, Iraq which resulted in the deaths of 22 people with 60 more injured.

(Sa’ada before the jihad.)

Sa’ada After

YT: “Government and security forces would assault villages looking for “Houthi” suspects and demanded that all males are to come out and give themselves up. Because of the excess and harsh treatment of those who are apprehended, all the males vacated the villages, even though most of them have nothing to do with the “Houthis” or the “Faithful Youth” Movement of the late Hussein Badr Eddine Al-Houthi.

YT: “The prisons are packed in Sa’ada with hundreds – some say thousands of suspected “Houthis”, most of whom do not have any clear charges against them or even have any links with the “Houthis”. Some just happen to be from the same village or neighborhood, where there might have been one or two “Faithful Youth” members, or are just relatives of a suspected “Houthi””

YT: When these “rebels” were overwhelmed by the Government security and military forces, they were killed and their bodies were burned or dragged on official and unofficial vehicles around the city.” Eyewitness accounts tally 19 bodies burned and no count could be obtained on the dragged bodies.

US State Dept

In 2003, U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS/ICE) agents in New York conducted an investigation of a company suspected of being involved in the smuggling and distribution of pseudoephedrine. The investigation disclosed that employees at the business were sending a large number of negotiable checks to Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa. Analysis of the documents seized as a result of search warrants and bank records revealed that the suspects had also wire transferred money to an individual with suspected ties to the al-Qaida organization. ICE agents also initiated an investigation pursuant to an outbound seizure of suspected hawala-generated funds seized en route to Yemen, concealed in jars of honey. The investigation disclosed that the courier and the reputed owner/broker of the funds were actively involved in a hawala network.

This is President Saleh’s website, where only one person bothered to post anything to the forum in two years. If you don’t have the patience to wait 15 minutes for it to load, this is the intro to the webpage:

In 1978, no one wanted to be President of the Arab Republic of Yemen. International diplomats bet he won’t last a week.
HE PROVED THEM WRONG.

big time. Since the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, there was a presidental election in 1998. Saleh won a five year term with 96% of the vote. The term was extended to seven years. 2006 is the next election.

NM: “The country is a presidential republic where despite democratic structures there is no fair chance for the opposition.”

19/5/2005 Opposition wants Saleh out of presidential race
Al-Sahwa net- The opposition parties would contest the Yemeni presidential elections slated for next year only if President Salah is out of the presidential race, said Mohammed Qhatan, the Islah political department chairman.

Addressing a political seminar, titled “Yemen after 15 years of democracy” Al-Jazeerah center for human rights studies held Wednesday in memory of the 15th anniversary of Yemeni re-unification, Qahatan said, “Opposition parties would strongly participate in the forthcoming presidential elections in case the PGC adopted sound democratic approach. Indeed, it’s feasible to nominate a person, who assumed power for 30 years, for the presidency then ask the opposition parties to get involved in the electoral process”. (Read on …)

Main headlines

- Battles continue in Saada

he Yemeni government’s accusations against him has changed so many times, it’s hard to keep up. The only sustainable charge is that the Believing Youth group chanted slogans against the US. Al-Houthi had stated that peaceful protest was within the law and if a law was passed outlawing chanting, they would abide. They were not chanting slogans in favor of a monarchy or against the Yemeni government, but against the US occupation of Iraq and support for Israel. This is quite a common practice in the Middle East, that whole “Arab Street” thing. Its not enough to warrent the brutal slaughter that followed and the mass arrests of innocent people, thousands of them who are in hellish Yemeni prisons without charges for months.

It is difficult to call them an armed group, in the context of approximately 20 million weapons in Yemen, a country of twenty million people. It’s an armed country. Four guys on the street corner constitute an armed group. They were, before being atacked, a religious group.

In an interview with al-Jazeera, Houthi denied any monarchist ambitions, saying that “these are allegations publicized by the government in order to cover up the hideous crime it committed against us.” The Yemen Times reports, “(al-Houthi) denied that his father and his brother Hussien, who was slain in Sa’ada last September by the governmental forces, stood against the Authority, the Republic or the President.’We were astonished at being attacked in the first war because of a slogan chanted by the youth in solidarity with their fellow Moslems in Iraq and Palestine,’ he added.”

Now he wants American help:

YT In an interview to the Arabia Satellite TV channel from his residence in the Swedish capital Stockholm last Friday, Yemeni MP Yahya al-Houthi said, “I have contacts with the United States of America and several states asking them to intervene for resolving the issue between the authority and al-Houthi group and we have presented files on the issue to international courts.” Parliamentarian al-Houthi has also called on every human and international organization to intervene for solving the crisis and putting an end to the war.

Mr al-Houthi also mentioned that the ruling party “ General People’s Congress”, of which he is a member, was following a policy of fighting some of its members and that most of those killed in the events of Saada were from the ruling party that is practicing suppressive policy against them and their families….Al-Houthi also says we have not formed an independent organization or political party with a definite title but rather citizens reconciled with all people, whether in authority or not, adding that his brother Hussein al-Houthi was embracing an ideology, leading a cultural movement and that he was not after toppling the ruling regime as well as not having any ambitions in power.