It is a timely complaint. While Emmanuel Macron goes, Friday, December 3, to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saturday to Saudi Arabia, the lawyer Joseph Breham filed, Friday morning, at the Paris judicial court, a complaint with the constitution of civil parties aimed at the two heir princes and de facto rulers of these Gulf countries, allies of France. The offenses alleged against the Emirati Mohammed Ben Zayed Al Nahyane (nicknamed “MBZ”) and the Saudi Mohammed Ben Salman (nicknamed “MBS”) are as serious as they are numerous: “war crimes”, “torture”, “enforced disappearances” , “Participation in a criminal association of a terrorist nature” and “terrorist financing”.
The two leaders are not the only people affected by this complaint. Their respective chiefs of staff and several Yemeni officials are also targeted, as well as Hana Al-Rostamani, the CEO of the First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) – itself designated as a legal person -, as well as the jihadist. French Peter Cherif, arrested on December 16, 2018 in Djibouti, now detained in France. The thread that connects all these individuals? The war in Yemen, where Me Breham visited in June 2021, for about twenty days.
The blockade, a weapon of war
The lawyer, who accompanied journalists Guillaume Dasquié and Nicolas Jaillard, while filming a documentary in the rebel zone, originally wanted to investigate the damage caused by French weapons sold to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These two Sunni Gulf powers unleashed a devastating war in Yemen in March 2015 in order to re-establish President Mansour Hadi, overthrown by Houthi rebels of Zaidite persuasion (a branch of Shiism). supported by Iran.
The war has stalled. While Saudi Arabia and the Emirates mainly proceed through aerial bombardment, the coalition, whose ground troops are a motley collection of the remnants of the Yemeni army, Sudanese auxiliaries and tribal or fundamentalist militias, tramples in the face of the fighters. Houthi hardened and difficult to dislodge their mountains where 60% of the 30 million Yemenis live. The main weapon of war has become the blockade put in place by the Saudi-Emirati coalition. In the rebel zone, everything is rationed: food, medicine, gasoline. By the end of 2021, the war in Yemen will have caused 377,000 deaths, according to a United Nations estimate.
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