SANAA, 16 April 2004 — A leader of a failed secessionist rebellion in Yemen returned home yesterday after ten years of self-imposed exile following the civil war.

Anees Hassan Yahya flew home from the United Arab Emirates, to which he fled following the failed bid by the former South Yemen to secede from the north.

Yahya’s party, the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), led the secession attempt that was quashed by forces of President Ali Abdullah Saleh after a ten-week war.

He was among 16 top secessionist leaders tried in absentia and sentenced to death or prison. The return of Yahya was in response to an amnesty granted by President Saleh last May to top exiled dissidents who led the secession attempt.

Saleh’s amnesty applied to five southern leaders who were sentenced to death by a Sana’a court in May 1997, including former vice-president of united Yemen, Ali Salim Al-Beedh and Haidar Al- Attas, a former prime minister.

Nine other dissidents who got prison sentences are also to take advantage of the amnesty.