Jarallah Omar
Jarallah Omar al-Kuhali (Arabic: جار الله عمر) (1942 in Kuhal, Ibb Governorate – 28 December 2002) was a Yemeni politician, intellectual, and guerrilla fighter.
Life[edit]
He was trained in Islamic law, but in the 1960s he turned towards Marxism. He was a political prisoner from 1968 to 1971 and participated in the civil war between North Yemen and South Yemen as a leader of the National Liberation Front, a politico-military coalition affiliated to the socialist government of the South. He escaped to the South after his forces were defeated by then-North Yemeni President and current unified Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Omar became a member of the Politburo of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), the ruling party in the South, and was named minister of culture in the government of a newly unified Yemen in the early 1990s. He resigned his cabinet post and went into exile shortly before a failed attempt by former southern politicians to re-establish a "Democratic Republic of Yemen" in 1994. The president of the ephemeral secessionist regime, Ali Salim al-Baidh, was a former ally of Omar in the factional disputes within the YSP in 1986. When Omar returned to the country in 1995, he developed a reputation as a leading advocate of human rights and political freedoms in the authoritarian political climate of Yemen.
Death[edit]
Omar was assassinated in Sana'a in December 2002, receiving two shots to the chest. The assassin was 26-year-old Ali Ahmad al-Jarallah, an Islamist hardliner who sided with Saleh's government in the civil war.[1] He was arrested immediately following the shooting and in interrogation revealed plots to kill other secular leftist (Nasserite and Baathist) leaders. He was sentenced to death on 14 September 2003.[2]
Aftermath[edit]
At the time of Omar's death, he was deputy secretary-general of the YSP. He was buried in the "martyrs' cemetery" in Sana'a, on the orders of President Saleh.
References[edit]
- ^ Yemeni Socialist Party leader shot dead Dawn, 29 December 2002
- ^ "Yemeni Politician’s Killer to Die" Khaled Al-Mahdi, Aljazeerah.info (article stored in Google cache; dated 15 September 2003)
External links[edit]
- "The Death and Life of Jarallah Omar" by Sheila Carapico, Lisa Wedeen, and Anna Wuerth (31 December 2002)
- "Yemeni politician shot dead" BBC (28 December 2002)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
- 1942 births
- 2002 deaths
- Assassinated activists
- Yemeni socialists
- Assassinated Yemeni politicians
- Yemeni Marxists
- Yemeni democracy activists
- Deaths by firearm in Yemen
- People murdered in Yemen
- Yemeni Socialist Party politicians
- South Yemen independence activists
- Asian politicians assassinated in the 2000s
- Politicians assassinated in 2002