SANAA, 16 May 2004 — A leading Yemeni opposition politician appeared in Sanaa yesterday after he went missing in Cairo three months ago, party officials said. Ahmad Salim Ubaid, a former deputy defense minister in South Yemen who fled to Egypt after a failed bid by his Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) to split the former South Yemen from the north, disappeared on Feb 18.

“He is staying with a friend in Sanaa,” a YSP official told Arab News. “Ubaid phoned his family today and reassured them that he was in Sanaa safe and sound,” he said.

Sources close to Ubaid’s family confirmed that he arrived in Sanaa at least two days ago.

Ubaid’s party led the secession attempt that was quashed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s forces after a ten-week war, in which more than 10,000 people were killed. The YSP ruled South Yemen for nearly 20 years, and shared authority with Saleh’s General People’s Congress party after unification.

The party declared the forming of the “Democratic Republic of Yemen” in the southern part of Yemen in May 1994, four years after the reunification of North and South Yemen.

Sixteen top secessionist leaders, who went into self-imposed exile, were tried in absentia and given prison or death sentences.

A Cairo court last week began hearings on Ubaid’s disappearance after Yemeni and Egyptian rights groups filed a lawsuit against Egypt’s Interior Ministry and the Yemeni Embassy in Cairo. The hearing was adjourned to July 13.

Media reports in Sanaa and Cairo said Egyptian authorities had extradited the politician to Yemen in a security swap, in which Sanaa handed over Egyptian militants, allegations that Yemen vehemently denied.

On Wednesday, the Yemeni Parliament questioned Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Rashad Al-Alimi on the opposition leader’s fate. The minister reportedly said his ministry was waiting for official response from the Egyptian authorities on Ubaid’s whereabouts.

Last May, President Saleh granted an amnesty to the exiled dissidents, and urged them to return home.

The amnesty applied to five southern leaders who were sentenced to death by a Sanaa court in May 1997, including former vice president of united Yemen, Ali Salim Al-Beedh and Haidar Al-Attas, a former prime minister.