The Shiite Houthi guerrillas Yemen announced the execution by firing squad of nine people convicted of involvement in the 2018 assassination of the leader of their movement by air raid of the military alliance led by Saudi Arabia.
The death three years ago of Saleh al-Samad, head of the rebel supreme political council, was dealt a severe blow to the Houthis, a Shiite Islamist movement affiliated with Iran.
According to the Houthi-affiliated SABA news agency, the nine were executed “by gunfire in al-Tahrir Square” in the center of the capital Sanaa, which was occupied by rebels in 2014, “in the presence of senior Houthi officials and residents” of the city.
The nine people executed were among 16 people convicted by a Houthi court of involvement in the murder. The other seven sentenced to death – including the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, and former US President Donald Trump – were tried in absentia..
The air strike in April 2018 against Saleh al-Samad resulted in the death of six more people in the province of Hondaida (west). Saudi Arabia claimed responsibility for the attack.
“The heroes of the Royal Air Force have successfully targeted the leader of the Houthi paramilitary group, Saleh al-Samad,” Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Prince Khaled bin Salman, said on Twitter at the time. He added that the attack was personally overseen by his brother, the Crown Prince, following Saleh al-Samad’s threats that the rocket attacks on the kingdom would escalate.
The Houthis are fighting for control of Yemen with the internationally recognized government, backed by the Riyadh military alliance that intervened in the conflict in late March 2015, to stem the advance of Shiite rebels.
The armed conflict in Yemen has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and displaced millions more. It has provoked what the UN calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Saleh al-Samad was the highest-ranking Houthi to be killed since the Saudi intervention began.
The rebels, who vowed to avenge his death, often fire ballistic missiles and send drones to which they place explosives against the kingdom.
On September 5, three ballistic missiles were fired from Yemen at Saudi Arabia. They were intercepted by Riyadh’s air defenses, but the wreckage injured two children and damaged 14 houses in the eastern part of the kingdom.
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