Ex-Yemen regime reverses decision to expel UN rights envoy
The Saudi-backed former Yemeni regime says it has rescinded a decision to expel the head of the United Nations human rights office in the war-torn country.
Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany, the former regime's UN envoy, said in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that it had decided “to maintain the status quo” of George Abu al-Zulof.
On Thursday, the former Yemeni regime accused Zulof of lacking impartiality in his assessments of the human rights situation in Yemen, and declared him persona non grata.
The move came just two days after the UN raised alarm over the use of internationally-banned cluster bombs by Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
The letter further cited “excesses” by the Yemen office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
However, the government of fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, reversed the plan and “decided to give more time to review the relationship” with the UN organization “because of the fuss created around the matter,” according to the letter.
The regime came under heavy criticism by the UN and other international organizations after deciding to evict Zulof.
Earlier on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein urged Yemen’s former authorities to allow his representative to continue his work, calling the expulsion order “unwarranted, counter-productive.”
The UN chief also criticized the Saudi aerial campaign against Yemen on the same day, saying the reported use of cluster bombs in heavily populated areas “may amount to a war crime.”
Yemen has been under incessant military attacks by Saudi warplanes since March, 2015. More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others wounded in the Saudi air raids so far.
On Friday, thousands of protesters lined Sana'a streets to condemn the Saudi airstrikes and military incursion into the country.
The Saudi military strikes are meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh.
Hadi stepped down in January 2015 and refused to reconsider the decision despite calls by Ansarullah.
The movement later said Hadi had lost his legitimacy as president of Yemen after he escaped Sana’a to Aden in February, and later to Saudi Arabia.
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