Suspected member of Yemen’s Houthi rebels arrested in Germany

German authorities have arrested a man suspected of being a member of Yemen’s Houthi militia, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.

The suspect, a Yemeni national who was taken into custody in the southern town of Dachau, just outside Munich, is believed to have joined the group in Yemen in 2022, undergoing military training and ideological instructions.

According to Germany’s top law enforcement agency, he joined fighting in Yemen’s Marib province in early 2023.

Prosecutors accuse the suspect of having been a member of a terrorist organization abroad as an adolescent. Under German criminal law, anyone aged between 18 and 21 at the time of the offence is classified as an adolescent.

The accused, only named as Hussein H. in line with Germany’s strict privacy laws, was remanded in custody after being brought before an investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, Germany’s highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction.

Federal prosecutors, who are also based in Karlsruhe, said the declared aim of the Houthis is “to strengthen and expand their position of power in Yemen and to destroy Israel.”

The Iran-backed rebel group, which controls large parts of war-torn Yemen, has been firing missiles at Israel since the beginning of the latest Gaza war in what it says is a show of solidarity with Palestinian extremist movement Hamas, another Iranian proxy group.

The Houthis have also been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea.