The spokesman for the Arab coalition, Brigadier General Turki Al-Maliki, denied the allegations of the Houthi leader, Hussein Al-Ezzi, that he received the body of his brother Fares Al-Ezzi “recently,” and described them as misleading.

Al-Maliki told Asharq Al-Awsat that what was stated in the statements of the Houthi leader and circulated on websites affiliated with the group “is inaccurate and lacks credibility,” explaining that “the process of recovering and handing over the bodies took place in June 2023, and through it the bodies of 9 soldiers of the Saudi forces were recovered.” And 20 Yemeni army soldiers, as well as the return and delivery of the bodies of 57 Houthi fighters who were killed on the border.

Al-Ezzi, the former deputy foreign minister of the internationally unrecognized coup government in Sanaa, posted an obituary on his account on the “X” platform that he attached to a photo of his brother, announcing that there was no funeral under the pretext of his concern not to distract the group’s supporters from the war against Israel, as he claims. .

When asked about the motives behind choosing the announcement at this time, the coalition spokesman said: “Such statements are misleading, and may have been announced for internal reasons related to the Houthis, knowing that the name mentioned in the statement was not among the names presented during the negotiations to recover the bodies. It is not unlikely that this name is among those killed in regional conflicts.”

Al-Maliki stressed that the coalition “deals with the issue of prisoners and detainees and the recovery of the bodies of fighters as a purely humanitarian issue that must not be politicized by all parties, taking into account the values ​​of tolerant Islamic law, humanitarian principles, and cultural and social norms.”