Saudi Arabia places Al-Alimi’s deputy under house arrest

ADEN, May 15 (YPA) – Saudi Arabia placed deputy head of Saudi-formed Presidential of the Leadership Council (PLC), Aidarous Al-Zubaidi, under house arrest in the city of Aden, southern Yemen.

Political sources loyal to the coalition reported that the PLC’s head, Rashad Al-Alimi, left Aden airport, heading to Bahrain, accompanied by his deputy, the Salafist leader, Abdul Rahman Al-Muharami, indicating that Saudi Arabia prevented Al-Zubaidi from leaving Aden in order to face angry citizens’ protests as a result of the power outage due to the lack of fuel since the beginning of this week.

The sources explained that Saudi Arabia held Al-Zubaidi, who is appointed as the head of the so-called Supreme Committee for Financial Resources and Revenue Development” in accordance with the powers granted by Al-Alimi, responsible for the collapse of services in the city and in the rest of the southern provinces, amid accusations that he had plundered billions of riyals from huge revenues and granted them for the leaders loyal to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) without purchasing fuel for power stations in Aden.

The sources added that Al-Alimi and the head of the coalition-backed Aden government, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, presented a comprehensive file of the revenues collected by the STC, causing the government’s inability to pay the value of the fuel shipment to re-operate the electricity in the city.

They suggested that Saudi Arabia might push the angry protests in Aden against the STC after securing the exit of Al-Alimi and Ben Mubarak out of Yemen, in an attempt to put Al-Zubaidi in a real confrontation with protesters suffering from the high summer heat.

During the past hours, the city of Aden has witnessed a relative calm in protests demanding electricity and water services and price stability due to the catastrophic economic collapse, amid expectations of protests to resume.

AA