Terror organization: Houthis

Status: A Yemeni political figure who is the former President of the Revolutionary Committee or Revolutionary Council, a body formed by Houthi militants and the de facto President of Yemen. (Yemen that is not controlled by the Houthis is not functional country in 2024.)

Role: He was one of the military field commanders who led the group’s seizure of the Yemeni capital Sana’a in September 2014, and eventually became the de facto leader of Yemen after the Houthi takeover of the Yemeni government in 2015. He is a cousin of Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, the group’s leader and he does exactly what his cousin tells him to do.

Location: Yemen

Activities:

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi (Arabic: محمد علي الحوثي, romanized: Muḥammad ʻAlī al-Ḥūthī; born 1979) is a Yemeni political figure who is the former President of the Revolutionary Committee or Revolutionary Council, a body formed by Houthi militants and the de facto President of Yemen. He was one of the military field commanders who led the group’s seizure of the Yemeni capital Sana’a in September 2014, and eventually became the de facto leader of Yemen after the Houthi takeover of the Yemeni government in 2015. He is a cousin of Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, the group’s leader.

According to the 6 February 2015 statement by a Houthi representative, the Revolutionary Committee is in charge of governing Yemen and forming a new parliament, which will then appoint a five-member presidential council. However, other reports indicated the committee itself would serve as the presidential council.

Al-Houthi has been described as a “former political prisoner”.

The United Nations, the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Houthi declaration placing al-Houthi and the Revolutionary Committee in charge of Yemen’s government. The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on 15 February 2015 calling on the Houthis to relinquish control of state institutions, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warning that Yemen teetered on the verge of state failure.

On 9 November 2018, an opinion article by al-Houthi calling for peace in Yemen was published in The Washington Post.

On 11 January 2021, the United States designated al-Houthi’s movement as a “terrorist organization”. al-Houthi condemned the move by saying that the group “reserves its right to respond” to any designation by the Trump administration. al-Houthi himself was also blacklisted by the United States government in the same measure.