SANAA, 26 September 2005 — Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced yesterday a general amnesty for hundreds of Zaidi rebels who fought the army in the north of the country in April and ordered their release. In a surprise move, he also announced compensation for the exiled Zaidi family which ruled the country until the 1962 revolution.

“I declare an amnesty for those detained over the support for Hussein Al-Houthi and his father,” Saleh said in a speech marking the 43rd anniversary of the revolution which ended 44 years of Zaidi rule in Sanaa.

“We are probably announcing a surprise for everybody by declaring that the revolution (movement of 1962) is forgiving and will compensate the Hameededdin family for its (lost) properties,” he said.

The Hameededdin family “will be compensated in a just manner, according to the legal documents,” Saleh said at a forum south of Yemen on the eve of the anniversary. “We do not hold any grudge against anyone, and had they been good, there would have been no revolution against them,” he said.

Mohammed Al-Badr Ahmad Yehya Hameededdin was the last imam of the Zaidi minority which had been ruling Yemen until the 1962 coup which installed a republican regime.

He died in exile some three years ago, and the rest of the family is scattered throughout the Middle East and Britain.

Saleh also announced a pardon for Zaidi rebels accused of mounting armed attacks against government forces.

“We declare the pardon despite the blood that spilled from 700 young men who were killed because of Al-Houthi,” he said.

Government forces in mid-April crushed a rebellion by followers of Hussein Al-Houthi’s father, Badruddin, after capturing their strongholds in Saada, some 250 km north of the capital Sanaa.

In early September, the government disclosed that Badruddin was killed in the April clashes with the army.

Government officials said the amnesty included mosque preachers Yahya Hussein Al-Dailami and Muhammad Ahmad Muftah who were sentenced by a Sanaa court on May 29 to death and 10-year-jail term respectively for supporting Al-Houthi’s rebellion.

Also to be pardoned is the judge Muhammad Ali Luqman, who was sentenced last October to 10 years in jail on the same charge, the officials said.