Saudi Arabia has alleged the United Arab Emirates smuggled Yemen’s STC separatist leader Aidarous Al-Zubaidi out of the country, with the coalition saying he travelled to the self-declared republic of Somaliland by boat and later boarded a flight via Mogadishu to Abu Dhabi.
The plane that took him to Mogadishu from Somaliland "under the supervision of UAE officers" waited for an hour before flying to a military airport in Abu Dhabi, the coalition said in a statement early on Thursday, without specifying whether Zubaidi was still on board.
Al-Zubaidi was accused of high treason and removed from Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council on Wednesday, while the coalition bombed his home province after he failed to attend talks in Riyadh, a move that left his fate unclear and clouded efforts to contain a military escalation that erupted last month.
"Reliable intelligence indicates that Aidaros Alzubidi (Al-Zubaidi) and others have escaped in the dead of night," a statement from the coalition said, detailing a boat-and-plane journey from Aden to Abu Dhabi via Somaliland and Somalia.
The leader of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) sailed from Aden to Berbera in Somaliland, a breakaway region in the Horn of Africa, after midnight on Wednesday, the coalition said.
He then flew in a Russian-made Ilyushin plane to Mogadishu "under the supervision of UAE officers", before continuing to a military airport in Abu Dhabi, arriving on Wednesday evening, it added.
No immediate comment was available from the UAE foreign ministry.
The fast-moving crisis in Yemen's south has created a rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two most powerful countries in the oil-rich Gulf, fracturing a coalition headed by Yemen's internationally recognised government that is fighting the Iran-backed Houthis.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE first intervened in Yemen after the Houthis seized the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2014.
The UAE joined the Saudi-backed coalition the following year in support of the internationally recognised government.
The STC was set up in 2017 with UAE backing and eventually joined the government coalition, which controls southern and eastern Yemen. Last month STC forces suddenly seized swathes of territory, shifting the balance of power and pitting Saudi Arabia against the UAE.
