The French President will visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week, accompanied by a large delegation of French ministers and business leaders to likely conclude negotiations on an arms contract in the UAE. While Emmanuel Macron is visiting the two countries involved in the war in Yemen, a complaint for war crimes, torture and financing of terrorism was filed Friday, December 3, in Paris, against Mohammed Ben Zayed and Mohammed Ben Salman.
It is a complaint that comes at the right time. While Emmanuel Macron goes, Friday, December 3, to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saturday in Saudi Arabia, the lawyer Joseph Breham filed, Friday morning, at the judicial court of Paris, a complaint with constitution of civil parties aimed at the two crown princes and de facto leaders of these Gulf countries, allies of France. The offences charged against the Emirati Mohammed Ben Zayed Al Nahyane (nicknamed “MBZ”) and Saudi Mohammed Ben Salman (nicknamed “MBS”) are as serious as numerous: “war crimes”, “torture”, “enforced disappearances”, “participation in a criminal association of a terrorist nature” and “financing terrorism”.
The two leaders are not the only people targeted by this complaint. Their respective chiefs of staff and several Yemeni officials are also targeted, as well as Hana Al-Rostamani, the CEO of First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) – herself named as a legal entity – as well as French jihadist Peter Cherif, arrested on December 16, 2018 in Djibouti, now held in France. The thread that connects all these individuals? The war in Yemen, where Me Breham went in June 2021, for about twenty days.
The blockade, a weapon of war
The lawyer, who accompanied the journalists Guillaume Dasquié and Nicolas Jaillard, filming a documentary in the rebel zone, originally wanted to investigate the damage caused by French weapons sold to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These two Sunni Gulf powers launched a devastating war in Yemen in March 2015 to restore President Mansour Hadi, who had been overthrown by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Zaidi faith (a branch of Shiism).
The war has stalled. While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are essentially carrying out aerial bombardments, the coalition, whose ground troops are a motley collection of remnants of the Yemeni army, Sudanese auxiliaries and tribal or fundamentalist militias, is stalling in the face of battle-hardened Houthi fighters who are difficult to dislodge from their mountains, where 60% of the 30 million Yemenis live. The main weapon of war has become the blockade put in place by the Saudi-Emirati coalition. In the rebel zone, everything is rationed: food, medicine, gasoline. By the end of 2021, the war in Yemen will have caused 377,000 deaths, according to a United Nations estimate.
