A council fighting against Yemen’s Houthi rebels said Wednesday that it had expelled the leader of a separatist movement and charged him with treason after he reportedly declined to travel to Saudi Arabia for talks.
The statement, carried by the SABA news agency affiliated with the anti-Houthi forces, marks a new escalation between Saudi-backed forces and the Southern Transitional Council, or STC, which had been backed by the United Arab Emirates. The rift deepens uncertainty over Yemen’s future, already strained by more than a decade of war in the Arab world’s poorest country.
