Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi

Who is Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi?

Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi was a Zaidi religious leader and former member of the Yemeni parliament for the Al-Haqq Islamic party between 1993 and 1997. He was an instrumental figure in the Shia insurgency against the Yemeni government, which began in 2004. al-Houthi, who was a one-time rising political aspirant in Yemen, had wide religious and tribal backing in northern Yemen's mountainous regions. al-Houthi was accused by the Ali Abdullah Saleh government of trying to set himself up as imam, of setting up unlicensed religious centers, of creating an armed group called Houthis and of staging violent anti-American and anti-Israeli protests, as al-Houthi's followers felt Yemen's government was too closely allied with the United States.

According to a al-Houthi disciple, he had lived part of his life with his family in Qom, Iran. He claimed also that al-Houthi's relationship with Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, was similar to Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah.

On 18 June 2004, Yemeni police arrested 640 followers of Hussein who were demonstrating in front of the Great Mosque of Sana'a, and two days later the Yemeni government offered a bounty of $55,000.00 for al-Houthi's capture and launched an operation aimed at ending his alleged rebellion. In July, Yemen Army forces had killed 25 al-Houthi supporters and upgraded the bounty for the Shi'ite cleric to $75,500.00. After months of battles between Yemeni security forces and the Houthis, on 10 September, the Yemeni Interior and Defense Ministries released a statement in which they declared that al-Houthi had been killed with twenty of his aides in the Marran district, Saada Governorate.