Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
US president Donald Trump has been sentenced to death for war crimes by a court in Yemen.
The Houthi-run Specialised Criminal Court in the Yemeni governorate of Saada demanded Trump together with nine other defendants including the Saudi King and Prince go on trial for atrocities carried out in support of the Yemeni government.
When they failed to turn up, the case against the 10 accused went ahead in absentia on Thursday, and has now resulted in the death penalty for the president.
The Houthi-affiliated Saba agency said the charges related to a 2019 airstrike by a Saudi-led military team which reportedly hit a school bus and killed 51 people, including 40 children.
Chaired by Judge Riyadh Al-Razami, the court issued death sentences against Trump, Saudi King Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince, Commander of the Saudi Air Force Turki bin Bandar bin Abdulaziz, and Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
Yemen’s Vice President Ali Mohsin Al-Ahmar, Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher, Defence Minister Muhammad Al-Maqdishi, and former US Defence Secretary James Mattis were also sentenced to death.
The court also said that the accused have to pay a fine of USD 10 billion to the families of those killed in the 2019 airstrike.
Yemen’s internationally-recognised government has been battling the Iran-backed Houthi movement, which has seized most of the north of the country and the capital Sana’a, since 2014.
A Saudi-led military coalition joined on the side of the government the following year.
The United Nations has called the Yemeni conflict the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
The Yemeni government’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Houthi-run criminal court should be shut down in 2018.
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