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zvaigzdelasas · 3 months

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[BBC is UK State Media]

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has funded politically-motivated assassinations in Yemen, a BBC investigation has found, exacerbating a conflict involving the Yemeni government and warring factions which has recently returned to the international spotlight following attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

Counter-terrorism training provided by American mercenaries to Emirati officers in Yemen has been used to train locals who can work under a lower profile - sparking a major uptick in political assassinations, a whistleblower told BBC Arabic Investigations.

The BBC has also found that despite the American mercenaries' stated aim to eliminate the jihadist groups al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) in southern Yemen, in fact the UAE has gone on to recruit former al-Qaeda members for a security force it has created on the ground in Yemen to fight the Houthi rebel movement and other armed factions.

The UAE government has denied the allegations in our investigation - that it had assassinated those without links to terrorism - saying they were "false and without merit".

These are largely between the two parts of the "real" "legitimate" "internationally recognized" coalition govt of Yemen you've been scolded so much about over the last month btw [22 Jan 24]

Continued after the cut

The killing spree in Yemen - more than 100 assassinations in a three-year period - is just one element of an ongoing bitter internecine conflict pitting several international powers against each other in the Middle East's poorest country.[...]

In 2015, the US and the UK supported a coalition of mostly Arab states led by Saudi Arabia - with the UAE as a key partner - to fight back. The coalition invaded Yemen with the aim of reinstating the exiled Yemeni government and fighting terrorism. The UAE was given charge of security in the south, and became the US's key ally on counter-terrorism in the region - al-Qaeda had long been a presence in the south and was now gaining territory.[...]

Under international law, any killing of civilians without due process would be counted as extra-judicial.

The majority of those assassinated were members of Islah - the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It [...] has never been classified by the US as a terror organisation, but is banned in several Arab countries - including the UAE where its political activism and support for elections is seen by the country's royal family as a threat to their rule.

Leaked drone footage of the first assassination mission gave me a starting point from which to investigate these mysterious killings. It was dated December 2015 and was traced to members of a private US security company called Spear Operations Group.[...]

Isaac Gilmore, a former US Navy Seal who later became chief operating officer of Spear, was one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.

He refused to talk about anyone who was on the "kill list" provided to Spear by the UAE - other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden, the government's temporary capital since 2015.[...]

Mr Gilmore, and another Spear employee in Yemen at the time - Dale Comstock - told me that the mission they conducted ended in 2016. But the assassinations in southern Yemen continued. In fact they became more frequent, according to investigators from the human rights group Reprieve.

They investigated 160 killings carried out in Yemen between 2015 and 2018. They said the majority happened from 2016 and only 23 of the 160 people killed had links to terrorism. All the killings had been carried out using the same tactics that Spear had employed - the detonation of an improvised explosive device (IED) as a distraction, followed by a targeted shooting. The most recent political assassination in Yemen, according to Yemeni human rights lawyer Huda al-Sarari, happened just last month - of an imam killed in Lahj by the same method.[...]

Mr Gilmore, Mr Comstock, and two other mercenaries from Spear who asked not to be named, said that Spear had been involved in training Emirati officers in the UAE military base in Aden. A journalist who asked to remain anonymous also told us he had seen footage of such training.

As the mercenaries' profile had made them conspicuous in Aden and vulnerable to exposure, their brief had been changed to training Emirati officers, "who in turn trained local Yemenis to do the targeting", the Yemeni military officer told me.

Through the course of the investigation, we also spoke to more than a dozen other Yemeni sources who said this had been the case. They included two men who said they had carried out assassinations which were not terror-related, after being trained to do so by Emirati soldiers - and one man who said he had been offered release from a UAE prison in exchange for the assassination of a senior Yemeni political figure, a mission he did not accept.

Getting Yemenis to conduct the assassinations meant it was harder for the killings to be traced back to the UAE.

By 2017, the UAE had helped build a paramilitary force, part of the Emirati-funded Southern Transitional Council (STC), a security organisation that runs a network of armed groups across southern Yemen.

The force operated in southern Yemen independently of the Yemeni government, and would only take orders from the UAE. The fighters were not just trained to fight on active front lines. One particular unit, the elite Counter Terrorism Unit, was trained to conduct assassinations, our whistleblower told us.

The whistleblower sent a document with 11 names of former al-Qaeda members now working in the STC, some of whose identities we were able to verify ourselves.

During our investigation we also came across the name Nasser al-Shiba. Once a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative, he was jailed for terrorism but later released. A Yemeni government minister we spoke to told us al-Shiba was a known suspect in the attack on the US warship USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in October 2000. Multiple sources told us that he is now the commander of one of the STC military units. Lawyer Huda al-Sarari has been investigating human rights abuses committed by these UAE-backed forces on the ground. As a result of her work, she would frequently receive death threats. But it was her 18-year-old son Mohsen who paid the ultimate price.

He was shot in the chest in March 2019 while on a trip to a local petrol station, and died a month later.[...]

A subsequent investigation by Aden's public prosecutor found that Mohsen was killed by a member of the UAE-backed Counter Terrorism Unit, but the authorities have never pursued a prosecution.

Members of the prosecutor's office - who we cannot name for safety reasons - told us that the widespread assassinations have created a climate of fear that means even they are too afraid to pursue justice in cases involving forces backed by the UAE.

Reprieve has received a leaked UAE document that shows Spear was still being paid in 2020, though it is not clear in what capacity.

#quite a piece

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queerdraws · 6 months

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it's zoro's birthday!! happy birthday big guy, may you say many more insane things to your enemies in the coming years

#one piece #zolu #comic #a while ago I reread some of the earlier arcs in one piece and was caught off guard by zoro's dialogue in the daz bonez fight #finally got around to making a comic abt it #boys fluctuating wildly between chatting shit n making jabs at eachother n having a sweet heartfelt moment #they have the range #the weird shape next to zoro's face in the second panel used to be a question mark #umm but it didn't get erased fully apparently #and im too lazy to do anything about that now that i've noticed it so enjoy!#oh also when luffy says baaastard hes imitating zoro saying temeeeee #does quite have the same feel...“baaaa” like a sheeps bleat vs the kinda drawl-y rumble of “meeee”...oh well

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jacqcrisis · 2 years

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Award to this man for the funniest take ever

#uk politics #im still laughing about it #queen elizabeth #just imagining somber british doctors around the old bat in pieces #reporting 'yes things are quite concerning she seems very ill at the moment-'

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songtwo · 8 months

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it's already been said but it's crazy how female artists in the 90s wanted nothing to do w the feminist label and yet the message they sent through their music was actually empowering due to its rawness and authenticity while nowadays everyone tries too hard to be a feminist and an ally and they just come off as fake and bland bc it's all this sugarcoated liberal white feminism #girlboss barbie 2023 and the worst part is ppl actually buy into that but get scared when they see anything sinead oconnor did

#Ppl thinking the man by Taylor swift is a radical piece of feminist writing...... grow up #kinda related but not quite . everyone used to look so different and unique while now they all have the same face and style

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cinnamontoads · 4 months

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in the kitchen 🐟🔪

#one piece #sanji #vinsmoke sanji #my art #been sitting on this one all month cause I wasn’t quite sure how to finish it up so I kinda just didn’t lol #my first real stab at composition and gradient mapping (I screwed around w gradient maps on this for like an hour so I have a bunch of alts)

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zokenyu · 8 months

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#one piece #one piece live action #opla #roronoa zoro #sanji #1x8 #my gifs #what's their ship name?#zosan #sanzo #man i do not miss coloring dark scenes #also idk if that's what zoro really said abt sanji's hands #i don't think the cc were right #and i couldn't quite make out if that was the exact line #so forgive me

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boiledcaprisun · 2 months

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glub glab glob. seadwellin sunday.

#homestuck #feferi peixes #art #i havent done a piece like this in quite a while.. ouuuuhhgg!#ignore her wonky horns. even after about 3 years of being a homestuck fan i still cant draw her horns right #sorry for the inactivity all ive been drawing lately is yuri too cringe for the public eye.

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esmeblaise · 3 months

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Instead of setting sail and leaving Luffy alone Ace and Sabo got twin tattoos for their 17th birthday (they were both very very drunk)

masterpost

#one piece #portgas d ace #sabo #monkey d. luffy #sun child au #asl brothers #esmeblaise art #luffys other arm says nika #he didnt quite get the concept of the s and a representing the twin so he just crossed out the second letter to match #this was in my drafts for a while but my powers been out for a week

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thekaiserroll · 3 months

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Can you draw Sanji being drunk and being spoilt by zoro?

Anon I'm so sorry you had to wait so long for this drawing 😭

I was thinking too much about the ways Zoro could spoil Sanji. In the end I came up with Zoro letting Sanji rest on his chest. I hope it’s to your liking.

#I mean #Sanji's laying on the biggest chest in the strawhat crew #I'd say he's quite spoilt #sanji #zoro #zosan #one piece

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godsplatter · 5 months

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does anyone know what time we have to reap what we sow

#saw #saw movie #saw franchise #saw fanart #mark hoffman #peter strahm #coffinshipping #hoffstrahm #art tag #edit: forgot to add that redraw #quite actually my favorite piece rn heh

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sunclown · 1 year

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Quiet

#op #one piece #zoro #sanji #zosan #forever thinking sbout thriller bark #never getting over thriller bark #zoro sleeps more soundly hugging sanji because he doesnt get nightmares about not being able to stop him #and sanji sleeps (slightly) better hugging zoro cuz he can feel his heart and presence and know hes still alive #i think that was the point where they got their heads out of their asses #specially sanji #AS IN oh we def like eachother in a more profound way than just this guy is hot and annoying #but didnt quite get to do much or rlly talk about it till after timeskip #but dw theyll pick up right where they left it at which is the reassuring hugs and naps #my art

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otaku553 · 4 months

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He’s perfectly sane I swear

My submission for @where-does-the-heart-lie‘s DTIYS! Congrats on one year on tumblr!! Your art is always an absolute delight to see :D I hope this does it justice!

#one piece #sabo #whery dtiys #this finally pulled me out of my rendering block…. amazing #it’s been quite a while since I’ve last done a dark background rendered piece #I did end up accidentally changing the pose just a bit….. mostly just raise the elbow #rendering fire is such an experience. man.#do it for the wüsthof 17 slot walnut wood knife block………#the longer I look at it the less I like it so I need to post it Now #I am Nervous and Anxious and bad at replying but ASKSJFJFJSJ THANKS FOR THE SXF ACE ART ITS AMAZING #I am Going to draw that sometime soon it is So Cool

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lilli-eyr · 24 days

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