American Bazaar exclusive: The probe brings out surreptitious role of Al Islah, the country’s main Islamist political party.
AB Wire
ADEN: Investigations into a powerful car bomb blast in the last week of August in Aden, Yemen, revealed shocking details about interlinkages in the war-torn country between dreaded terror outfits and Islamist political and religious groups.
The blast in the crowded Mansoura neighborhood in Aden, which killed more than 50 and injured around 70 military recruits, was claimed by the Islamic State.
The probe into the dastardly violence clearly brought out the surreptitious role Al Islah, the country’s main Islamist political party, played in engineering terrorist acts in Aden, the temporary capital of Yemen’s legitimate and internationally recognized government.
According to sources involved in the probe, one of the lynchpins responsible for the blast in Al Mansoura, Ahmed Saif alias Abu Sufyan Al Adani, used to be associated for a long time with Al Islah. Al Islah is the Yemen counterpart of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
“The 28 year-old Ahmed, hailing from Al Mansoura, was a well-known activist of Al Islah before the war. He was among its principal activists in the locality, playing a leading role in the organization’s many charitable and religious activities in the area,” Brigadier Shallal Shayei, Director of Security, Aden, disclosed.
“He was on the pay-role of Al Hikmah society, a hardline Salafi group with close ties to Al Islah, which inducted him into military training conducted by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in the Ras Abbas camp during the Houthi attacks on Aden,” Shayei explained the sequence of events that culminated in the suicide attack.
“Following the training, Ahmed Saif disappeared from sight for a while, but later returned and began mobilizing youngsters in his locality to join the Islamic State. The fate of many of the youngsters who followed him into joining the ISIS remains unknown to this day,” the security chief of Aden said.
Shayei also revealed a complex web of dubious interconnections, going even beyond the Al Islah and Al Hikmah Society. He said Al Hikmah Society functioned under the generous patronage of the Kuwait-based Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), a notorious Salafi organization that was accused of funding terror in the past as well.
In 2008, the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated the Kuwait-based Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS) for providing financial and material support to Al Qaeda and al Qaeda affiliates. The Kuwaiti group has a strong presence in some areas of Aden, running charitable and health care activities on the surface and indulging in nefarious activities secretly.