Yemeni leader vows to defeat Houthis and repair broken country

Rashad Al-Alimi, the chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, promised to liberate his country from the Houthis. (Facebook/Rashad Al-Alimi)
Rashad Al-Alimi, the chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, promised to liberate his country from the Houthis. (Facebook/Rashad Al-Alimi)
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Updated 01 January 2023

Yemeni leader vows to defeat Houthis and repair broken country

Yemeni leader vows to defeat Houthis and repair broken country
  • Militia-run court in Sanaa condemns three teachers from province of Mahwet to death on espionage allegations

AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s leader has promised to liberate his country from the Houthis, pay public wages and restore deteriorating public services in his new year message.

“Your armed and security forces, popular resistance, and patriotic alignment will remain our exemplar for restoring the state, putting a stop to the coup, and defending the republican system,” said Rashad Al-Alimi, the chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, in a message on Twitter.

He said that the council, with the assistance of the Arab coalition headed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, will prioritize promoting harmony and collaboration between diverse Yemeni forces to restore peace to Yemen.

Al-Alimi went back on a previous statement that his government would be unable to pay government salaries due to Houthi assaults on oil infrastructure, and reassured the public that the council would attempt to secure regular salary payments.

“We reiterate our resolve to continue our efforts to relieve the suffering caused by the terrorist Houthi militia supported by Iran, including the regular payment of wages to civil and military personnel, diplomatic missions, and state-funded students in compliance with comprehensive government reforms.”

The eight-member presidential council came to power in April when former President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi stepped down.

Yemenis say that previous guarantees by the Yemeni government and the presidential council have not resulted in any changes on the ground in the freed provinces, as they continue to complain about rising costs, a depreciating currency, and severe and worsening power cuts.

The Yemeni riyal began the new year falling further against the dollar, extending a week of declines against other currencies for the first time in many months.

Traders said on Sunday that the Yemeni riyal was trading at 1,230 per dollar, down from 1,200 last week, following an official announcement on a full stop to oil shipments, the country’s principal source of income.

Unlike past years during winter, Al-Mukalla, Aden, and other government-controlled cities have experienced long periods without power.

Public workers say that their wages have not increased since 2011 and have lost 200 percent of their worth owing to the fast depreciation of the riyal and rising inflation.

Meanwhile, on the first day of the new year, fighting subsided in Taiz, Hodeidah, Marib and other provinces.

The calm came almost two days after fierce fighting between government forces and the Houthis in the southern province of Dhale left scores of combatants dead or injured on one of the worst days since the breakdown of the UN-brokered truce in October. 

Separately, a Houthi-run court in Sanaa condemned three teachers from the province of Mahwet to death on espionage accusations on Saturday, the latest in a series of death sentences against hundreds of people.

Abdul Majeed Sabra, a Yemeni defense lawyer based in Sanaa, told Arab News on Sunday that his clients who were abducted in 2015 from their home province Mahwet for allegedly collaborating with the Yemeni government and the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen.

They were sentenced in the capital’s Specialized Criminal Court.

Last month, a Houthi court sentenced 16 Yemenis to death for collaborating with the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen and the militia’s Yemeni adversaries.

The escalation in death sentences has been seen by Yemeni observers as a means of intimidating the population in Houthi-controlled areas, where discontent is rising due to the militia’s failure to pay public employees and its savage crackdown on the media and dissidents.


Sudan delays signing of deal to usher in civilian government

Sudan delays signing of deal to usher in civilian government
Updated 01 April 2023

Sudan delays signing of deal to usher in civilian government

Sudan delays signing of deal to usher in civilian government
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s military leaders and pro-democracy forces will delay the signing of an agreement to usher in a civilian government, both sides said in a joint statement issued early Saturday.
The postponement of the signing — which had been scheduled for later Saturday — comes as key security reform negotiations between the Sudanese army and the country’s powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces appear to have reached a deadlock.
A meeting will be held Saturday “to set a new date for signing the final political agreement, which could not be signed on time due to the lack of consensus on some outstanding issues,” the statement said.
Sudan has been mired in chaos after a military coup, led by the country’s top Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, removed a Western-backed power-sharing government in October 2021, upending the country’s short-lived transition to democracy.
But last December, the military, the RSF and numerous pro-democracy groups signed a preliminary deal vowing to restore the transition.
In recent months, internationally brokered workshops in Khartoum have sought to find common ground over the country’s thorniest political issues in the hope of signing a more inclusive final agreement.
Chief among the discussion points have been security sector reform and the integration of the RSF into the military — the topic of this week’s talks. But talks ended Wednesday without any clear outcome.
Shihab Ibrahim, a spokesperson for one of the largest pro-democracy groups that signed December’s deal, said the army and the RSF have struggled to reach an agreement over the timeline of the integration process.
The army wants a two-year timeline for integration while the RSF has called for a 10-year window, he said.
Spokespersons for the Sudanese army and the RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran’s judiciary chief threatens to prosecute ‘without mercy’ unveiled women

Iran’s judiciary chief threatens to prosecute ‘without mercy’ unveiled women
Updated 01 April 2023

Iran’s judiciary chief threatens to prosecute ‘without mercy’ unveiled women

Iran’s judiciary chief threatens to prosecute ‘without mercy’ unveiled women
  • Iran’s Interior Ministry earlier released statement that reinforced mandatory hijab law
  • Iranian women widely seen unveiled in malls, restaurants, shops and streets

TEHRAN: Faced with an increasing number of women defying the compulsory dress code, Iran’s judiciary chief has threatened to prosecute “without mercy” women who appear in public unveiled, Iranian media reported on Saturday.
Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei’s warning comes on the heels of an Interior Ministry statement on Thursday that reinforced the government’s mandatory hijab law.
“Unveiling is tantamount to enmity with (our) values,” Ejei was quoted as saying by several news sites. Those “who commit such anomalous acts will be punished” and will be “prosecuted without mercy,” he said, without saying what the punishment entails.
Ejei, Iran’s chief justice, said law enforcement officers were “obliged to refer obvious crimes and any kind of abnormality that is against the religious law and occurs in public to judicial authorities”.
A growing number of Iranian women have been ditching their veils since the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in the custody of the morality police last September. Mahsa Amini had been detained for allegedly violating the hijab rule.
Government forces violently put down months of nationwide revolt unleashed by her death.
Still, risking arrest for defying the obligatory dress code, women are widely seen unveiled in malls, restaurants, shops and streets around the country. Videos of unveiled women resisting the morality police have flooded social media.
Under Iran’s Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures. Violators have faced public rebuke, fines or arrest.
Describing the veil as “one of the civilizational foundations of the Iranian nation” and “one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic,” the Interior Ministry statement on Thursday said there would be no “retreat or tolerance” on the issue.
It urged ordinary citizens to confront unveiled women. Such directives have in past decades emboldened hard-liners to attack women without impunity.


Israeli police fatally shoot man at Jerusalem’s holiest site

Israeli police fatally shoot man at Jerusalem’s holiest site
Updated 19 min 27 sec ago

Israeli police fatally shoot man at Jerusalem’s holiest site

Israeli police fatally shoot man at Jerusalem’s holiest site
  • Worshippers at the entrance to the said that police shot the man at least 10 times after he tried to prevent them from harassing a woman
  • The attack occurred hours after thousands of Palestinians had packed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound

JERUSALEM: Israeli police shot and killed a man who they alleged tried to snatch an officer’s gun at an entrance to a Jerusalem holy site early Saturday, raising fears of further violence during a time of heightened tensions at the flashpoint compound.
The police said the slain man was 26-year-old Mohammed Alasibi from Hura, a Bedouin Arab village in southern Israel. Palestinian worshippers at the entrance to the site on Saturday morning had a different account, saying that police shot the man at least 10 times after he tried to prevent them from harassing a woman who was on her way to the holy compound.
Hours after the incident, the muddy stone alleyway leading to the compound was still stained with blood.
Authorities said that officers detained the man for questioning outside the sacred compound home to Al-Aqsa Mosque in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City — the third holiest shrine in Islam. The compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, is also the most sacred site in Judaism.
The city’s contested compound has been a focus for clashes in the past, particularly in times of turmoil in Israel and the West Bank. This year, as violence surges in the occupied territory under the most right-wing government in Israeli history, fears of an escalation in Jerusalem have mounted with the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Israeli police have boosted their forces in the area as tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers from Jerusalem and the West Bank gather for prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
On Friday, more than 200,000 Palestinians gathered for noon prayers at the compound, which passed peacefully.
Just after midnight Saturday, police said Alasibi attacked one of the officers and grabbed his gun, managing to fire two bullets into the air as the officer struggled to restrain him. Police described the incident as an attempted terrorist attack and said they shot and killed him in self-defense.
But Palestinian worshippers milling around the compound on Saturday insisted that the man was not a terrorist. Noureddine, a 17-year-old who lived in the neighborhood and declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals, said he saw Alasibi confront police who had stopped a female worshipper on her way to Al-Aqsa Mosque. Alasibi’s relationship to the woman was not clear. He said some kind of disagreement broke out between Alasibi and the officers before he heard a dozen shots ring out.
“Nothing could justify that many shots,” he said, pointing to chaotic footage he filmed that showed Palestinian vendors and worshippers screaming at the sound of bullets being fired in rapid succession. “They were all at close range.”
Palestinian media widely reported that Alasibi was a doctor who had studied medicine recently in Romania.
Noureddine said police tried to force Palestinian vendors and worshippers out of the area after the incident, beating him and others with batons. Israeli police briefly closed the site before reopening it for dawn prayers.
Confrontations at the hilltop compound have triggered wider violence in the region in the past. Clashes at the site in May 2021 helped fuel the outbreak of a bloody 11-day war between Israel and Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers.
This year’s convergence of Ramadan with the Jewish holiday of Passover could increase the possibility of friction as the Old City hosts a large influx of pilgrims.
Early on Saturday, residents of the Old City shared videos of Israeli police entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound to remove a banner belonging to the Islamic militant group Hamas hanging over the shrine that called worshippers to confront right-wing Jews who were planning to tour the compound on Sunday.
Settlers in the Old City, and devout Jewish Israelis, have visited the Temple Mount in rising numbers in recent years. Under a long-standing agreement known as the status quo, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray at the site. Any small perceived change to the status quo at the site can trigger violence.
For the past year, Israeli-Palestinian fighting has surged in the occupied West Bank. At least 86 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli or settler gunfire this year, according to an Associated Press tally. Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed 15 people in the same period. Israel says most of those killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting police incursions and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.


US seeks to keep Yemen-bound ammunition seized from Iran

US seeks to keep Yemen-bound ammunition seized from Iran
Updated 01 April 2023

US seeks to keep Yemen-bound ammunition seized from Iran

US seeks to keep Yemen-bound ammunition seized from Iran

WASHINGTON: The United States is seeking to keep more than 1 million rounds of ammunition the US Navy seized in December as it was in transit from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to militants in Yemen, the Justice Department said on Friday.
“The United States disrupted a major operation by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to smuggle weapons of war into the hands of a militant group in Yemen,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“The Justice Department is now seeking the forfeiture of those weapons, including over 1 million rounds of ammunition and thousands of proximity fuses for rocket-propelled grenades.”
US naval forces on Dec. 1 intercepted a fishing trawler smuggling more than 50 tons of ammunition rounds, fuses and propellants for rockets in the Gulf of Oman along a maritime route from Iran to Yemen, the Navy said.
They found more than 1 million rounds of 7.62mm ammunition; 25,000 rounds of 12.7mm ammunition; nearly 7,000 proximity fuses for rockets; and over 2,100 kilograms of propellant used to launch rocket propelled grenades, it said.
The forfeiture action is part of a larger government investigation into an Iranian weapons-smuggling network that supports military action by the Houthi movement in Yemen and the Iranian regime’s campaign of terrorist activities throughout the region, the Justice Department said.
The forfeiture complaint alleges a sophisticated scheme by the IRGC to clandestinely ship weapons to entities that pose grave threats to US national security.


Russia protests about ‘provocative actions’ by US forces in Syria

Russia protests about ‘provocative actions’ by US forces in Syria
Updated 01 April 2023

Russia protests about ‘provocative actions’ by US forces in Syria

Russia protests about ‘provocative actions’ by US forces in Syria

Russia has protested to the American-led coalition against the Daesh militant group about “provocative actions” by US armed forces in Syria, Tass news agency said on Friday.
Tass cited a senior Russian official as saying the incidents had occurred in the northeastern province of Hasakah. The United States has been deploying troops in Syria for almost eight years to combat Daesh.
Hundreds of Daesh fighters are camped in desolate areas where neither the coalition nor the Syrian army exert full control. Russia — which together with Turkiye is carrying out joint patrols in northern Syria — has agreed special zones where the coalition can operate.
But Russian Rear Admiral Oleg Gurinov, head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, told Tass that US forces had twice been spotted in areas which lay outside the agreed zones.
“Provocative actions on the part of US armed forces units have been noted in Hasakah province ... the Russian side lodged a protest with the coalition,” he said, without giving details of timing.
Last week the US military carried out multiple air strikes in Syria against Iran-aligned groups that it blamed for a drone attack that killed an American contractor at a coalition base in the northeast of the country.
Russia intervened in the Syrian Civil War in 2015, tipping the balance in President Bashar Assad’s favor. Moscow has since expanded its military facilities in the country with a permanent air base and also has a naval base.