Sanaa, Yemen – The intelligence system in Yemen arrested on Wednesday a four-member activist team after it visited houses of Yemeni Jews in the capital Sanaa, Almasdar Online reported.
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The website quoted Fuad Al-Alawi, one of the members of the team, as saying that agents from the intelligence system intercepted and arrested them on charges of entering the houses of the Jews in the Residential City near the US embassy.
“The agents told us that entering the Jewish houses was against the law,” he was quoted as saying by telephone.
“We visited the Jews to discuss with them if they want to participate in Yemen’s comprehensive national dialogue conference that should include all factions in the country,” Fuad told the website.
The dialogue will be held in early November under the West-backed power-transfer deal that was reached after the 2011 turmoil.
“Our visit was aimed at having an idea if the Jews want to participate in the dialogue because they are Yemenis regardless their religion”, Al-Alawi explained.
Many Jewish families have left the country in the past few years, some secretly to the US and Israel. The remaining families, not many, were transferred from Saada and other far north provinces to the capital after they had been harassed.
What you have to realize about this neck of the woods is that the idea of writing the rules down someplace seems to be an innovation. The law is whatever the policeman or official you are talking to says it is.
Many visitors have been inside this Complex to interview or mingle with the Jews in recent 5 Years. But the law required every Visitor Must Get permition from the Security office to enter.
Since Haroun Zandani was stabbed to dead last May, the gov. became very strict.