Red Notice for Yahya al-Houthi, Ali Mohsen Accused of War Crimes and Ahmed
al-Badawi has an Interpol red notice but I dont see one yet for Yahya al-Houthi.
The Yemeni government said Thursday that the Interpol agency has agreed to pursue and arrest Yahya al-Houthi, a Member of Parliament accused of supporting and inspiring the armed rebellion against the government in Sa’ada, in the north of the country. Interpol, or the International Criminal Police Organization, was established as The International Criminal Police Commission in 1923 to assist international criminal police cooperation.
The government accuses al-Houthi of being involved in terrorist acts, including an assassination attempt on the US ambassador in Sana’a in 2005. Yahya al-Houthi, who is in Germany, is the brother of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, who has been leading the rebels against the government troops in Sa’ada for more than two months now. Some 500 people from both sides have been killed so far, according to available estimates. It is difficult to get exact figures, as the government is not allowing journalists into the area.
“Yemen has received an approval from the Interpol to put the name of the terrorist Yahya al-Houthi on the red list, whereby the countries in which this terrorist exists will be obligated to extradite him to Yemeni authorities via Interpol,” the state-run 26 September newspaper quoted an unidentified official as saying. “The Interpol will be chasing him wherever he is for bringing him to justice,” the official added. Interpol, however, has not confirmed this approval yet.
Sources in the German embassy in Sana’a said they did not know anything about this matter. But German sources in Sana’a said earlier that Germany, where Yahya al-Houthi is now based, was studying a request from Yemen to extradite al-Houthi back to Yemen for his support of an armed group inciting hatred against Yemeni Jews. The government accuses Yahya al-Houthi of being the mastermind behind a series of sabotage operations, which targeted senior military and civil officials as well as western diplomats during late 2004 and early 2005 inside Sana’a.
“He was involved in many terrorist crimes, as he was one of the prominent leaders in the armed terrorist organization formed by him and others. This organization carried out criminal acts such as murder, sabotage, and destruction of public and private properties in a number of places in Yemen,” the official said. “The terrorist Yahya al-Houthi was the leader of that terrorist group, after providing it with weapons, ammunition, explosives and explosive belts, with the aim of attacking foreign embassies and other vital sites. On May 3rd, 2005, that terrorist group fired an anti-armour missile at the US embassy in Sana’a.”
“The group was also planning to assassinate a number of foreign personalities, including the US ambassador, in addition to carrying out a number of terrorist operations which claimed lives of innocent citizens,” the official said. Yahya al-Houthi said from Germany that he had been working with a lawyer to convince the European Union to ban some Yemeni military officials from entering European countries.
“I and the lawyer Adel al-Dahab have been working to convince the European Union to ban the commander of the first armoured division, Ali Mohsen Saleh, and commander of the republican guards, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the former governor of Sa’ada Yahya al-Amri,” said Yahya al-Houthi in a letter emailed from abroad to Yemeni media on Thursday. In the letter he referred to the government leaders of the battles in Sa’ada.
In the letter, al-Houthi also accused some religious sheikhs of inciting people to go against the al-Houthi followers. He accused Sheikh Abdul Majeed al-Zindani and Sheikh Mohammed Ajlan, two outstanding Sunni clerics, of leading Takfeeris and Wahabis (extremist Sunnis) to fight with the government troops against al-Houthi followers. Meanwhile, the Yemeni government said it had set up a plan to confiscate heavy and medium-sized weapons from people throughout the country, and to close down weapons markets.
The plan will include determining the places where these weapons exist, and determining types of weapons exactly to be confiscated, and also a timeframe for the implementation of the plan in the fields. To bring this to success, the government said, there will be financial compensations for the people through the field committees that will do the job. The government, however, did not say when it is going to carry out this plan.
