(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Yemen's president said yesterday his country was a victim not an exporter of "terrorism" after it emerged one of the Paris gunmen received training from Al Qaeda in the violence-torn country.
Said Kouachi, one of the two brothers behind the attack on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, travelled to Yemen in 2011 and received weapons and training from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), security sources said. His brother Cherif meanwhile told French television before he was shot dead by police that he was acting on behalf of Yemen-based AQAP.
But President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi told French ambassador Jean-Marc Grosgurin that Yemen had been the victim of militant violence ever since 1998, when they seized 16 Western tourists leading to a shootout in which four of the hostages were killed.
"We affirm that Yemen has suffered greatly from the terrorism exported to it from abroad, and is not, as some say, an exporter of terror," he said.
Hadi voiced his country's "full solidarity with the French people and the families of the victims" of last week's shootings which left 17 people dead. He noted that on the same day that Charlie Hebdo was attacked, 40 people were killed in the Yemeni capital in a car bombing targeting would-be police recruits. "This proves that terrorism does not draw a distinction between one country and another... or one religion and another," said Hadi.
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