Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has released documents that show the United States militarily supported the Saudi-backed government of Yemen’s former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi before Riyadh began its campaign against Yemen.
The website on Friday released more than 500 documents, including emails and PDFs, pertaining to the Office for Military Cooperation (OMC) of the US embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana'a.
WikiLeaks said the files contained "documentary evidence" that showed Washington's "arming, training and funding of Yemeni forces in the years building up to the war" the Riyadh regime began against Yemen in March 2015.
The WikiLeaks documents are related to the time period from 2009 to just before Saudi Arabia launched the war.
"The war in Yemen has produced 3.15 million internally displaced persons. Although the United States government has provided most of the bombs and is deeply involved in the conduct of the war itself reportage on the war in English is conspicuously rare," said Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has long taken refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
In February 2015, the United States closed its embassy in Yemen over what it said were security concerns. A month later, Riyadh unleashed its war machine.
Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah fighters took state matters in their own hands after the resignation of Hadi, who escaped the capital just before the Saudi war began in March last year.
Washington has also been providing logistic and surveillance support for the Saudis in the military aggression, which has left at least 11,400 civilians dead, according to the latest tally by a Yemeni monitoring group.