Houthis say reserve right to respond to US terrorist designation
Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has said the group is entitled to respond to any US move to designate them as a terrorist organization, hitting back at the US administration of Donald Trump as “terrorist”.
“America is the source of terrorism,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of Yemen's Supreme Political Council tweeted on Monday. “The Trump administration’s policy and actions are terrorist. We reserve the right to respond to any designation issued by the Trump administration or any administration.”
It came a day after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced plans to designate the Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist group.
“The Department of State will notify Congress of my intent to designate Ansarullah, sometimes referred to as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)”, Pompeo said in a statement on Sunday.
He added that he also intended to designate three Ansarullah leaders, namely Abdul Malik al-Houthi, Abd al-Khaliq Badr al-Din al-Houthi, and Abdullah Yahya al Hakim, as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists."
Speaking with Press TV, Political commentator Tim Anderson said the US decision to designate the Ansarullah movement, which has been effectively the government of Yemen for the last five years, is aimed at justifying any form of aggression against Yemen.
“To call it terrorist is really to turn the meaning of the world upside down,” said Anderson, who is the director of the Center for Counter Hegemonic Studies (CCHS) in Australia. “I think we’re getting used to that, with the way the US views the world.”
In another tweet on Monday, al-Houthi posted pictures of Yemeni children who were killed and starved as a result of the US-backed Saudi coalition’s war against Yemen, criticizing the United States’ unbridled terrorism.
“Your terrorism is killing and starving the Yemeni children,” he added, addressing US leaders.
Saudi Arabia has been leading a war on Yemen since March 2015, in hopes of reinstating former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and destroying the Houthi movement.
The war, which the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the impoverished Arab country over the last six years.
The United States and a number of European countries are major suppliers of weapons to the Saudi-led coalition.
Mick Wallace, an outspoken member of the European Parliament, said last month that the EU was complicit in crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the Saudis and their regional allies.
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