Yemen:   Five years have passed since the assassination of the President of the Supreme Political Council in Yemen, Saleh Al-Sammad; This exceptional person, whose political sophistication in managing the state and the understandings it led with partners, and its military heroics on the battle fronts, from the fourth war on Saada, to the US-Saudi aggression against Yemen, has emerged.

The leader of Ansarullah, Sayyed Abdulmalik Al-Houthi, said, in a speech on the anniversary of the martyrdom of President Al-Sammad, that the movement conducted an investigation through which it reached a certain conclusion, that the US is the one that set Saudi Arabia to target the martyr Al-Sammad as a primary target. 

Who is the martyr president Saleh al-Sammad? What about his project to build the state? And why was it a target for the coalition of aggression against Yemen?

It is not possible to talk about the martyr president, Saleh al-Sammad, without mentioning that he is characterized by humility, moderation, and consensus. He was close to all political components, which made him acceptable to most of the Yemeni political parties.

By his wisdom, he thwarted the attempts of the aggression against Yemen to split the ranks and make any breakthrough on the home front, especially with regard to what had happened in December 2017. He was able, by gathering the leaders of the "Ansarullah" around him, to eliminate the coup of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the preservation of the security situation in Sana’a and the north, and the maintenance of the cohesion of the fronts.

Al-Sammad was also able to overcome the repercussions of Saleh's death, preserve the alliance of "Ansarullah" and the "Congress", and resume convening parliament sessions, the majority of whose members belong to Saleh's party.

He was a president eager to engage with the people in the various provinces. He was one of the first initiators to inspect the areas that were targeted by US-Saudi airstrikes, or the houses that were destroyed by the aggression, consoling their people. He was the first to visit the wounded and the shrines of the martyrs. He was near to the people, hearing their problems and was a seeker to address Yemeni issues.

President Al-Sammad's house was destroyed by the air raids of the warplanes, his farms were also destroyed, and two of his brothers were martyred during the unjust war, which was waged on Sa’adah.

He was known for his integrity and his fight against corruption. Despite being a president, he did not own any new land or real estate, since the start of the Saudi aggression against Yemen. And his comrades quoted him as saying: "Anyone who buys land or builds real estate these days - that is, the days of war - you should write the word corrupt on his forehead."

"One hand protects and another builds”

In stressful and difficult circumstances, the martyr president took over the reins of power. It was an exceptional mission at a sensitive time during which the country has been experiencing a military and economic war for years, the consequences of which have been borne by President Al-Sammad since the first day of his assumption of the presidency of the Supreme Political Council in 2016.

The project is based on two main pillars: the first is to unite national efforts in order to strengthen the steadfastness of the Yemeni people and rebuild state institutions. The other is to continue working on rehabilitating the army and providing it with qualitative combat skills and equipment, in addition to continuing military industrialization, until achieving self-sufficiency in all weapons.

The project, according to President al-Sammad's description, is "creating a civil state for the sake of the people, not a people for the sake of the state." This is what the Saudi coalition considered a threat to its existence, no less than the threat of Yemen’s ballistic missiles, which targeted Riyadh during the era of the martyr president, and changed the military equation.

In the first reaction of the Saudi coalition to the Al-Sammad project, the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, promised, during his visit to the United States of America, to cause splits within the "Ansarullah". The rpro-aggression government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi was reinstated in the exercise of its duties in the southern governorates, in an attempt to delude the international community that there is a government that controls the south.

After the failed attempts of the aggression to penetrate the Yemeni ranks, by spreading the security chaos, playing with the non-payment of salaries, and provoking internal strife, Saudi regimes realized the size of the impasse, and the difficulty of aborting the Al-Sammad jihadi project, so the next plan was the assassination decision.

The US Ordered His Assassination

After years of persecution, placing him as the second in the list of the “wanted", and allocating a prize of 20 million dollars for anyone who provides information about him, the Saudi coalition against Yemen managed to assassinate President Al-Sammad, on April 19, 2018, shortly after he finished an open and public meeting with the local authorities in the province of Hodeidah.

In his last meeting, he delivered a detailed speech from the depth of the southern provinces, on which the aggression is betting and seeking to strike their environment, after the humanitarian and economic crisis witnessed there, as a form of pressure to obtain some of what it has been unable to achieve on the fronts.

In his speech, Al-Samad said that he was informed that "the United States is adopting the battle of the Western Coast, while Saudi Arabia is just a tool to implement the American agenda," addressing the US ambassador to Yemen, Matthew Tueller, by saying: "We will receive you on the daggers of our guns", a phrase that was the title of the stage that followed his assassination.

The plane that assassinated Al-Samad was a US-made MQ-9 plane, as confirmed by the Ansarullah, which indicates that "this crime bore clear fingerprints of the Americans."

Also, the strategic military vision, which the martyr president possessed, is one of the most important reasons for his assassination, according to retired Brigadier General in the Lebanese Army, Charles Abi Nader, who confirmed to Al-Mayadeen Net that "the martyr Al-Samad was one of the first civilian military officials, who presented an organized and focused plan in order to organize and develop the military structure, by drawing up recruitment plans, and developing and manufacturing Yemeni military capabilities.