For a long time, the liquidation of figures from the Islah Party, the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Salafist leaders and journalists, remained an unknown dimension of the strategy of a regional power in Yemen. In the eyes of outside observers, the long series of assassinations committed in the southern governorates of the country, especially between 2016 and 2018, often seemed like a marginal issue in the conflict. These assassinations were seen as a (tacitly acceptable) form of fighting against jihadists, a policy deemed necessary and effective after the liberation of Aden from Houthi influence during the summer of 2015. In any case, this policy remained under close scrutiny.
In this context, the Aden authorities, loyal to the regional power, passed off the assassinations that targeted dozens of people as simply a settling of scores between Islamists. In particular, they pointed the finger at the responsibility of jihadists or even the Houthis, as was the case in the case of the assassination of the rising Salafist figure, Abd al-Rahman al-Adani, who was killed in February 2016. In other cases, they announced that their extrajudicial liquidations targeted Members of Al-Qaeda or ISIS.
However, in the city of Aden and its surrounding areas, involvement of the regional power in the assassinations, which in reality had completely different goals, was no secret. Civilians were targeted who distanced themselves from the jihadists, had no commitment other than political or mosque-related activity, and what they all had in common was criticism of the regional power. The list of victims of this secret war is long. At least a hundred people were killed between 2016 and 2018 in attacks that led to insecurity in the large coastal city, and which continue to this day. While Aden during this period should have been a showcase for a peaceful Yemen free of the Houthis, the city remained in a state of instability and misery. Since then, it has been able to embody in the eyes of many Yemenis the incompetence of possible alternatives to the rebels coming from the north.
Initially, Al Jazeera broadcast, in its investigative documentary program “The Black Box,” a documentary entitled “What role is the regional power looking for in Yemen?” in 2018, that is, at the height of tension between a Gulf country and its neighbors, in which the regional power was accused of financing a series of assassinations. To fight its opponents, especially the Muslim Brotherhood in southern Yemen. This documentary revealed that this strategy was accompanied by many human rights violations, especially systematic torture in many secret centers spread in areas under control of the regional power.
Six years later, Nawal Al-Mahqafi's relentless documentary American mercenaries hired provides confirmation of the accusations against the regional power. This journalist of Yemeni origin has solid experience, and has won three Emmy Awards in honor of her work on sex trafficking in Iraq and on the Covid crisis in Yemen. In her documentary titled “The War in Yemen: Political Assassinations Funded,” Al-Mahqafi allows direct listening to the narration of American citizens, who are former soldiers, who directly participated in the assassination program. In their interventions, they confirm that they participated in the fight against the jihadists, and they are certain that they only did good deeds, and obeyed the orders coming from the regional power without saying a word.
Throughout the documentary, horrific webs are unmasked; The mercenaries were contracted through the security company “Spear Operations Group,” which is run by the Hungarian-Israeli Abraham Golan, thanks to his contacts with a Palestinian man, who became an advisor to the ruler of the regional power.
The journalist’s investigation includes a number of interviews and supporting documents, and benefited from the hard work carried out by the organization “Reprieve” and human rights activist Baraa Shaiban. It also included previous information that had been published by the American media outlet Buzzfeed in 2018. These data as a whole prove how the identities of most of the victims cannot in any way be linked to armed Islamic movements. Even if so, extrajudicial executions remain a clear violation of human rights, and are carried out outside any legal framework. The documentary shows how these are by no means “collateral victims” and that it is a deliberate strategy to eliminate opponents of the regional power, even by going through an alliance with a number of jihadists hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood. The documentary mentioned specific names and details, in addition to strange coincidences, such as those that occurred between the assassination of Ahmed Al-Idrissi, a leader of the Southern Movement, who is known to have refused to hand over the port of Aden, which was under his control, and to transfer its administration to the regional power. Issues of politics and exploitation are closely intertwined.
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