The Yemeni Parliament condemnedThursday the Houthi calls for lifting immunity of MPs loyal to the internationally-recognized government and suing them over attending Parliament sessions in Seyoun last April.
At its Thursday meeting chaired by Speaker Sultan al-Barakani in Riyadh, the Parliament speakership panel dubbed the Houthi calls as illegitimate fromillegal party.
Those "invalid procedures .. are gross threat and flagrant violation against all international human conventions, rights and freedoms," the panel added.
The Yemeni Parliament has been experiencing division following the war, with most of its members in Houthi-held areas holding semi-regular sessions in Sana'a, including Speaker Raa'i. But their number has increasingly declined after former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed in his house by Houthis on the 4th of December, 2017, two days after he had declared his GPC party's disconnection from partnership with Houthis and called for uprising against the group.
Early this July, head of Houthi Supreme Political Council told heads of Sana'a-based parliament committees that he intended to refer the names of 100 MPs living abroad to the public prosecutor for legal actions over treason charges, according to parliamentary sources in Sana'a.
Heads of the parliament committees warned of the move proposed by Mahdi al-Mashat, objecting any action aimed at lifting immunity of those MPs, the sources added.
Such a move would incite similar reaction, lead to full division of the Parliament, add to obstacles facing a political solution and prolong the war, said the heads.
On 13 April, the Yemeni Parliament held its first session in Seyoun under legitimacy since war started in March 2015.
On Thursday, pro-Houthi politicians and academics called for canceling the membership of all the MPs who appeared at Seyoun session.
The Yemeni constitution dismisses any session held outside the capital of Sana'a as illegal, they argued.
Yemen has been racked by a 4-year bloody conflictbetween the internationally-recognized Yemeni government's forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who ousted the government in 2014.
