Reuters
Sanaa
Yemen’s dominant Houthi group said yesterday that President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi had lost his legitimacy as head of state and he was being sought as a fugitive from justice.
Houthi militiamen seized the capital Sanaa in September and laid siege to Hadi’s residence last month, prompting his resignation and leading to a political vacuum.
But Hadi escaped to Aden in southern Yemen last week after a month under house arrest and yesterday, he officially recanted his resignation.
He now holds court guarded by thousands of tribesmen and army loyalists from the mainly Sunni Muslim south.
“The higher revolutionary committee is following the suspicious moves by Hadi, who lost his legitimacy to act as president of the Republic of Yemen, and whose reckless acts harmed the Yemeni people,” the Houthi group said in a statement, its first official reaction since Hadi fled.
The power struggle between the Shia Houthis in Sanaa and Hadi in Aden casts more doubt on UN-sponsored talks to resolve Yemen’s crisis peacefully, and exacerbates sectarian and regional splits which may plunge the country into civil war.
Both sides have been racing to consolidate their claim to power.
The Houthis say their push was a revolution which swept aside a corrupt government and President Hadi that he is the elected and internationally recognised leader.
“We are seeing a Libya-sation in Yemen. It’s polarised between two competing governments. Thankfully unlike Libya, the competition hasn’t descended into fighting - yet,” said Farea al-Muslimi, a researcher with the Carnegie Middle East Centre.
Sources close to the president told Reuters he is considering declaring Aden as Yemen’s interim capital until Sanaa is taken back from the Houthis. Loyalist army units and tribesmen from Hadi’s neighbouring province of Abyan now run the city and much of the south.
The Houthis, who hail from the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam that ruled Yemen’s north for a 1,000 years before it became a republic in 1962, appear determined to quash Hadi’s momentum.
They hope to swiftly patch together a caretaker government to replace the one that resigned along with Hadi and prime minister Khaled Bahah.
“Sixteen ministers from Bahah’s government have agreed. Those who are refusing we will send to the general prosecutor on charges of treason against the nation,” the group’s Al Masirah television said.
The new tensions are making a negotiated solution less likely and increase the risk of a potential clash, which the Houthis’ opponents hope will lead to their undoing.
“I am not optimistic of the success of the dialogue because the main party to it, President Hadi, is not represented there,” Ahmed Kelz, a negotiator and a leader in an opposition party.
“I expect that just as the Houthis expanded into the north, west and centre of Yemen, they will be driven to push south and will drown there,” he added.

Frenchwoman and driver kidnapped
Gunmen kidnapped a Frenchwoman and her Yemeni driver in Yemen’s capital yesterday morning as she was on her way to work, Yemeni security sources and French authorities said.
The unidentified gunmen intercepted the vehicle on 45th Street in central Sanaa and took the two people to an unknown location, the Yemeni sources said.
They said the Frenchwoman was a consultant to Yemen’s Social Fund for Development, a state fund set up in 1997 to promote development and poverty reduction.
Police said they were searching for the abducted people.
French authorities confirmed the incident. “We unfortunately confirm the kidnapping this morning, in Sanaa, of a French national working for an international organisation,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We are fully mobilised to try and locate her and ensure a speedy liberation.”
President Francois Hollande, at a news conference, described the abducted Frenchwoman as a 30-year-old who worked for the World Bank. “She was kidnapped in front of a ministry in Yemen,” he said.
“We ask for her to be released as soon as possible, we are trying to locate her and will do all we can for her to be freed.”