South Yemen executes 4 after ‘coup attempt’

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 6

South Yemen executes 4 after ‘coup attempt’

NZPA-Reuter Bahrain Communications with South Yemen, on the Gulf of Aden, were cut early yesterday after its official radio reported an unsuccessful coup attempt and the execution of four plotters. Those executed included the former President, Ab-dul-Fatah Ismail, a guerrilla colleague of President Ali Nasser Muhammad in the fight which led to independence from Britain in 1967. - Radio broadcasts from Aden reported the abortive coup and an attempt to kill Nasser Muhammad, saying the capital was calm. Soon after it began to broadcast

martial music and dropped a scheduled news broadcast, according to radio monitors. International operators said telephone and telex lines were cut They could offer no explanation. Besides Ismail, those executed were named as the former Vice-President Ali Ahmed Nasser Antar, the Minister of Local Government Ali Salem al-Beedh, and Ali Shai Hadi, chairman of an important committee of the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party. The radio said several other people had been arrested and would be tried. It said “imperialist and reactionary circles” were

behind the coup attempt, 1 but gave no details. 1 South Yemen, a pro- : Soviet country which was the former British-adminis- I tefed South Arabian Fed- 1 eration and included Aden, i became independent as the 1 People’s Democratic Repub- < lie of Yemen after a long guerrilla war. ] Nasser Muhammad and i Ismail, both leaders of a 1 pro-Soviet faction, came to power in June, 1978, when 1 they overthrew and exe- < cuted President Rubayi Ali. < Nasser Muhammad took ’ over as head of State until 1 the end of the year, then t handed over the presidency i to Ismail who retired for j

health reasons in 1980. Nasser Muhammad assumed the presidency again. Ismail returned home from self-imposed exile in Moscow last year and diplomats said he was pressing for reforms and policy changes. Aden was a thriving free port and the largest British military base east of Suez before independence. Stagnation followed the British withdrawal and the closing of the Suez Canal after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Today the country of 2.2 million at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula is one of the poorest in the Arab world.