SANAA, 29 June 2004 — Yemeni security officials said yesterday the country’s military forces were closing in on an anti-US cleric and scores of his armed followers in a remote mountainous area in the north of the country.
“Security forces in collaboration with armed forces today cornered cleric Hussein Badruddin Al-Houthi and his followers,” in Saada province, about 250 kilometers north of Sanaa, said a security source quoted by the state-run Saba news agency. According to the source, some Al-Houthi followers were arrested, while others surrendered to authorities voluntarily.
Mediation between the cleric and government forces reached a deadlock Sunday after authorities said the besieged religious leader refused to surrender. Authorities blame Al-Houthi for protests against the United States and Israel in mosques of Saada and the capital Sanaa.
The central government deployed hundreds of troops last week in Marran and launched a massive chase for Al-Houthi, a former MP and a leader of the Shiite sect.
Security officials said that during fierce clashes that erupted on June 21, some 62 people including seven soldiers were killed. Sixty-eight followers of the cleric have been arrested.
Al-Houthi is also accused of “receiving a foreign financial aid aiming at disturbing the country’s security and stability,” according to an Interior Ministry statement.
One security official said that the operation is expected to be brought to an end soon, with the government forces tightening grip on the cleric’s place. “The troops are now positioned about 100 meters away from Al-Houthi’s stronghold,” the official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
A non-governmental rights watchdog on Sunday denounced the military operations and called on the Parliament to open an investigation. In a press release Yemen’s National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms urged the government “to abide by measured provided by the constitution and law in its accusations against the citizen Hussein Al-Houthi”.
“Security apparatuses have no right to replace the judicial power to give indictments and hand down punishments without any legal or judicial procedures,” the organization said in a press release.
