AL-MUKALLA: A court in Yemen’s southeastern province of Hadramout on Tuesday sentenced four Yemenis to death for kidnapping international humanitarian workers last year. 

The Specialized Criminal Court of First Instance for Terrorism and State Security in the port city of Al-Mukalla, Hadramout’s capital, charged Mohammed Ali Al-Harethi, Ali Ghaled Al-Salehi, Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Salehi and Shehab Abdullah Al-Salehi with kidnapping two employees of the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, and ordering their execution by firing squad or beheading.

Five others were absolved in the same case.

In March 2022, armed men believed to be Al-Qaeda militants intercepted a vehicle transporting a German and a Mexican in the Hadramout province between Al-Aber and Al-Khasha. 

Six months later, the captors were apprehended, and Yemeni security forces raided their hideout and freed the two hostages.

During the past three years, the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, and other armed groups have killed and kidnapped a number of international charity workers across the country. 

In August, MSF said that two of its foreign employees had been kidnapped in the central province of Marib, not far from where their colleagues had been kidnapped in 2022. 

The organization’s Yemen office refused to share with Arab News any information on the situation of the two workers or the identity of the abductors, saying it is “still working on the safe return of colleagues.”

Armed men on a motorcycle assassinated a UN food program employee in the southern city of Taiz in July, prompting the UN agency to suspend operations in the besieged city and increase security around its employees.

Meanwhile, Yemenia, the country’s national airline, has announced the resumption of flights from Sanaa airport to Amman, days after suspending the only commercial operations from the capital due to Houthi restrictions on the company’s access to its bank accounts. 

The company said it would resume its near-daily flights between Sanaa and Amman on Friday, without explaining how it resolved the dispute with the Houthis.

Yemenia recently announced that it will suspend flights between Sanaa and Amman in protest at the Houthi refusal to allow the airline to withdraw funds from its accounts in Houthi-controlled banks.

The Houthis responded by stopping a Yemenia plane from taking off from Sanaa airport, alleging that they blocked the company from withdrawing large amounts of money from its accounts over corruption concerns.