SANAA (Dispatches) – A Yemeni official says Britain is spying on the country’s telecommunications networks, with the complicity of the Saudi-backed former regime officials.
“Britain is carrying out espionage activities on some Yemeni telecommunications networks, and some submarine cables from southern governorates, which they have taken as bases for them to serve their colonial goals,” a member of Yemen’s negotiating delegation, Abdul Malik Al-Ajri, wrote on Twitter.
Al-Ajri described the incident as “a blatant violation of Yemen’s sovereignty and the privacy of Yemeni citizens”, which is taking place with the “shameful complicity” of the former regime officials.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah slammed the U.S. and Britain for openly supporting Saudi Arabia in its military aggression against Yemen while urging the Sana’a government defending the country to stop fighting, saying such a dual approach is meant to keep up arms sales to the Riyadh regime.
Abdullah called on Washington and London to stop taking sides with the Saudi-led aggressor and work instead to play a positive and neutral role in efforts to establish peace in Yemen.
The remarks came after top American and British diplomats condemned the latest retaliatory missile and drone attacks by Yemeni Armed Forces against Aramco oil facilities in the city of Ras Tanura, situated in Eastern Province, and other locations.
Yemeni forces regularly target positions inside Saudi Arabia in response to the devastating military aggression, which was launched in March 2015 with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and several other Western countries.
The aim of the war was to return to power the Saudi-backed former regime and crush the popular Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.
However, Saudi Arabia has failed to achieve any of its goals, despite leaving hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and turning Yemen into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.