Yemen’s former leader Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi dies in exile at 80

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Yemen’s former president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled house arrest by Houthi rebels and spent his final years in Saudi Arabia, has died, Yemen’s presidency says.

State-run Yemeni TV said Hadi died at his residence at age 80 on Thursday in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, but gave no other details.

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Hadi was the internationally recognised president of Yemen who led a fractured government mostly from exile for eight years as the country descended into civil war and famine before stepping down in 2022.

Rashad al-Alimi, the head of the Presidential Leadership Council – the leadership body of Yemen’s internationally recognised government – said Hadi believed in the Yemeni people’s “right to a just state, freedom and human dignity”.

“He led the battle to defend the republican system,” al-Alimi said on X.

The government announced three days of mourning, during which flags will be flown at half-staff.

Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia in 2015 as war erupted between the Iran-backed Houthis, who had forced the government from the capital Sanaa, and a Saudi-led coalition.

He handed over his powers – reportedly under Saudi pressure – to the newly formed Presidential Leadership Council in April 2022, as Yemen entered a United Nations-brokered ceasefire.

Yemen remains divided between the Houthi-controlled north and the government-run south, which includes a patchwork of factions.

Although the ceasefire is largely holding, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of people through direct and indirect causes. Last year, 19.5 million people needed aid, the United Nations said.

Hadi took office in 2012 after a long stint as vice president to Ali Abdullah Saleh, who reluctantly ended his 33 years in power during Arab Spring protests.

Hadi, a career military officer, was waved through as the sole candidate in an election in which he won 99.8 percent of the vote.

His presidency was thwarted with spells of unrest, with his opponents accusing him of favouring the country’s eastern oil-rich provinces at the expense of the mountainous heartlands dominated by Houthis.

After the Houthis overran the capital in 2014, they placed Hadi under house arrest in early 2015. He escaped in February of that year.

Hadi is survived by his wife, Hala, and six children.