Al-Sharq al-Awsat: Exiled Yemeni army officers return back home

Some 32 Yemeni army officers on Monday evening returned back home to Yemen from Damascus following a compulsory exile that lasted for almost 8 years since the Yemeni civil war in the summer of 1994.

In its Wednesday's issue, the London- based al-Sharq al-Awsat daily said that those Yemeni military men who used to assume posts in various leaderships of various lines in the Yemeni armed forces before their expulsion abroad are a shift of a collective voluntary return back, making use of the general amnesty decision released by the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh during the civil war, of which he excluded a group which he had called the "16 persons."

Among the army officers included in this shift and of high military ranks, together with their families are Col. Pilot Ahmad Muhammad Saeed, Col. Pilot Hussein Omar; Col. Ahmad Ali al-Muflis and the two pilots Muhammad Hassan Saad and Taha Muhammad Hussein Saleh.

The returning back army officers reported that there are large number of Yemeni military men who are in Syria are on their way to return back to Yemen after they are convinced to do so.

The paper indicated that the Yemeni embassy in Damascus had arranged for the return back of the Yemeni evacuees from Syria to Yemen and carried out the coordination process and arrangements for their return back.