YEMEN. ZAIDI MEMBER SENTENCED TO DEATH

a Yemeni court sentenced to death Hussein Mohammad al-Dailami, a member of a rebel Shiite Zaidi movement, after he was convicted of forging illicit contacts with Iran. Dailami, 40, was sentenced to death for "making contacts with a foreign country, namely Iran," said judge Najib Qaderi.
He was also accused of supporting a rebellion by members of Yemen's Zaidi minority, which left hundreds dead in fighting between insurgents and security forces.
The state security court also sentenced another Zaidi defendant, Mohammad Ahmad Muftah, who was in his mid-forties, to eight years in prison for supporting the revolt.
The charge sheet said Dailami met with Sanaa-based Iranian diplomats several times, and asked them to provide support to what he called "the Zaidi religious movement in Yemen." He also visited Iran in 1997.
The two were also accused of helping set up a cell in Sanaa.
Both were in court but were taken back to their prison cells after challenging the integrity of the tribunal before the verdicts were pronounced.
The Zaidis are a Shiite sect dominant in northwestern Yemen but in the minority in the mainly Sunni country. President Ali Abdullah Saleh on May 14 accused Zaidi rebels engaged in fierce fighting with government forces in the country's northwest of seeking to overthrow his republican regime and charged that anti-regime conspiracies were hatched both "outside and inside" Yemen.