SANA’A, 16 May — After a failed assassination attempt in March against Ameen Ahmed Qasim, a prominent Yemeni socialist leader, the Ministry of Interior and the Public Prosecutor promised to do their best to identify the perpetrators and to bring them to justice. But after more than two months, the investigations have revealed nothing.

When the Yemen Times interviewed Qasim, he said that the assassination attempt could have been politically motivated, considering that he is a prominent leader in the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP).

The YSP is the greatest enemy of the ousted president Saleh, who practiced several illegal acts against its leaders, including forced imprisonment, looting millions of dollars and pursuing and preventing them from practicing their businesses and maintaining their investments.

Qasim was one of four men who controlled the YSP’s fund and had the right to sign money transfers after the unification of Yemen until the first quarter of 1994.

“Only Mohammed Haidra masdos, Yahia Al-Shami, Ali Salem Albeidh and I were authorized to pay money from the party’s accounts before the unification,” according to Qasim.

Anonymous armed men attacked Qasim and tried to assassinate him when he was driving by the Ministry of Finance towards Al-Sabeen area in the capital Sana’a. The assailants fired on his car from the right side, on Mujahed Street, where the office of the General People’s Congress is located.

Qasim accused no one for attempting to kill him, but rather conveyed the matter to the security authorities to investigate it.

Regarding  Saleh’s  withdrawal of  large amounts of money from a bank in Bahrain and other banks through forgery, Qasim said that he doesn’t know exactly how much may have been withdrawn and by whom.

“Saleh’s regime arrested me in the political security prison between 1994-1995 and I was placed under house arrest,” he recalled.

“The political security took my offices and stores; they closed my company’s bank accounts until 1996. All my work stopped because the keys to my offices and stores remained with them,” he added.

Qasim said that he lost about USD nine million and several guarantees were confiscated because he wasn’t able to provide the contracts and commitments he signed with foreign companies and other companies before 1994.  

Moreover, he lost contracts with several international agencies because they heard that the state had closed his companies.

Qasim added that when political security stormed his offices, they arrested and imprisoned several Yemeni and foreign employees for days, threatening them not to work for Qasim after his release.

Furthermore, they arrested clients who had been coming regularly into the company to finish their business. However, they were released afterward on the condition that they would not deal again with Qasim.

Political security members went a step further and arrested Qasim’s eldest son along with several relatives from his house, some as young as 17. They also cut his house’s telephone lines and prevented any visitors from entering, according to Qasim.

He added, “what is more annoying is that my wife was also subjected to constant harassment, even when grocery shopping.”

Qasim said that he was arrested and subjected to illegal acts so that he would handover to Saleh the Socialist Party’s money, which was estimated at USD 14 million.

Saleh’s regime took USD 12.7 million from these accounts in addition to money belonging to Qasim. They also took money from some companies in which the Socialist Party had invested, in addition to several pieces of the party’s real estate.

“Some leaders of the Socialist Party asked Saleh about the missing money, but he warned them of the consequences of talking about the funds again,” he said