UAE fund political assassinations in Yemen

BBC investigation reveals that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has financially supported politically motivated assassinations in Yemen, adding complexity to the ongoing conflict recently highlighted by Red Sea ship attacks.

Counter-terrorism training provided by American mercenaries to Emirati officers in Yemen has been used to train locals who can work under a lower profile – sparking a major uptick in political assassinations, a whistleblower told BBC Arabic Investigations.

The BBC has also found that despite the American mercenaries’ stated aim to eliminate the jihadist groups al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) in southern Yemen, in fact the UAE has gone on to recruit former al-Qaeda members for a security force it has created on the ground in Yemen to fight the Houthi rebel movement and other armed factions.

The UAE government has denied the allegations in our investigation – that it had assassinated those without links to terrorism – saying they were “false and without merit”.

The killing spree in Yemen – more than 100 assassinations in a three-year period – is just one element of an ongoing bitter internecine conflict pitting several international powers against each other in the Middle East’s poorest country.

The deadly atmosphere has discouraged the permanent return of Yemen’s internationally recognised government. This, it could be argued, has indirectly helped to embolden the Iran-backed Houthis – currently in the news for attacking ships and disrupting trade in the Red Sea. In recent days, Washington has announced that it will now re-designate the group as “global terrorists”.

I have been reporting on the conflict in my native Yemen since it began in 2014. The fighting led to the government losing control of the country’s north to the Houthis – who over the years have become savvier and better equipped.

In 2015, the US and the UK supported a coalition of mostly Arab states led by Saudi Arabia – with the UAE as a key partner – to fight back. The coalition invaded Yemen with the aim of reinstating the exiled Yemeni government and fighting terrorism.

The UAE was given charge of security in the south, and became the US’s key ally on counter-terrorism in the region – al-Qaeda had long been a presence in the south and was now gaining territory.

BBC Arabic’s Nawal al-Maghafi reveals how the UAE hired mercenaries to conduct targeted assassinations of its political enemies in Yemen, with American mercenaries starting the killings in 2015.

But instead of this establishing greater stability, during my frequent reporting trips at that time I witnessed a wave of mysterious targeted killings, in Yemeni government-controlled southern areas, of Yemeni citizens unconnected to terror groups.

Under international law, any killing of civilians without due process would be counted as extra-judicial.

The majority of those assassinated were members of Islah – the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a popular international Sunni Islamist movement which has never been classified by the US as a terror organisation, but is banned in several Arab countries – including the UAE where its political activism and support for elections is seen by the country’s royal family as a threat to their rule.

Leaked drone footage of the first assassination mission gave me a starting point from which to investigate these mysterious killings. It was dated December 2015 and was traced to members of a private US security company called Spear Operations Group.

I finally met one of the men behind the operation shown in the footage in a restaurant in London in 2020. Isaac Gilmore, a former US Navy Seal who later became chief operating officer of Spear, was one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.

 

Source: BBC