III. The Attack

The Friday of Dignity massacre, in which  gunmen in civilian clothing opened fire with military assault rifles on a largely peaceful protest rally, was the single deadliest attack on demonstrators of Yemen’s 2011 uprising. The attack killed at least 45 protesters—three of them juveniles—and wounded up to 200 others, many of them seriously.  It marked a turning point in the movement against President Saleh, prompting the defection of dozens of government officials and diplomats, and assumed symbolic importance within the protest movement because of the brazen character of the shootings and the high death toll.

Hours after the attack, President Saleh declared a 30-day state of emergency.[53] He and Interior Minister al-Masri blamed “armed” protesters for the bloodshed—a charge the president repeated the following week.[54]

Witness testimonies and multiple interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch tell a different story: unarmed protesters were finishing their midday prayer when gunmen opened fire on them from rooftops and nearby streets. After the gunmen shot at them, protesters threw stones at the gunmen, and caught and beat several suspected attackers.

“Protect Your Homes!”

The attack was carefully planned.[55] Gunmen began assembling in the area of the attack after midnight on March 18, 2011.  At that time, at least 15 armed men, about 10 of them from Mahweet governorate, entered the Sanaa house of Mahweet’s governor on Ring Road, about 30 meters south of the new wall, according to testimony of one of the governor’s neighbors.[56]

Map of Sanaa Protest Area

By morning, local residents and balatija had placed tires along the south side of the wall. Abdullah Muhammad al-Judubi, a 24-year-old employee of a printing company, was among several witnesses who described Ali al-Ahwal as playing a leading role in preparing to set fire to the wall:

I passed by my store to check up on things and found a large tire underneath a billboard, and I was worried it would catch fire. So I told Ali Ahmad al-Baidani [al-Ahwal] and the other one beside him to remove it. He said, “Don’t worry, if it gets burned it is my responsibility.”[57]

At approximately 11:30 a.m., a man drove through the neighborhood in a taxi, shouting through a megaphone such warnings as: “People of the neighborhood, protect your homes!”[58] Zone leader Aqil al-Bawni, who gave a similar account, identified the man with the megaphone as neighborhood council member Abd al-Jalil al-Sanabani.[59] Al-Sanabani was subsequently charged connection with the attack and at this writing was listed as fugitive from justice.[60]

At around noon, thousands of protesters gathered for midday prayer, packing Ring Road from the beginning of Change Square to the north side of the wall. On the south side, local residents “were all over the area behind the wall to protect the neighborhoods because they assumed the protesters would try to enter from side streets,” university student Nasr al-Bawni testified.[61]

A helicopter flew over Change Square shortly before the shootings.[62]  A Human Rights Watch weapons analyst identified the aircraft in the video as a Soviet-design Mi-17 transport helicopter configured as a gunship, but without weapons. Only the Air Force is known to possess such helicopters in Yemen. At the time of the attack it was commanded by President Saleh’s half-brother, Gen. Muhammad Saleh.[63]

“The helicopter was definitely flying over the square. It was not there by coincidence,” said Kasinof, The New York Times reporter who was at the scene. “We hadn’t seen that happen before.”[64]

At around 12:30 p.m., during the Friday prayer sermon, “the balatija started trying to provoke us by cursing at us and calling us names,” Khaled Raja, a reporter for the opposition Suhail TV, told Human Rights Watch. Scuffles broke out between the two sides on one edge of the prayer area near the wall, he said.[65]

Raja said he saw men armed with guns in trees, on rooftops and behind sandbags near the wall: “They were positioning themselves as if something was going to happen.”[66]

A Shower of Bullets

At approximately 1:15 p.m., as protesters were finishing their prayer, men on the south side of the wall set fire to the tires beside the wall, according to the indictment and witness testimony.  Abd al-Karim Saleh Awadh al-Yafii, who worked at a furniture store near the wall, told prosecutors:

Some men in civilian clothes . . . doused the tires with petrol then set them on fire, and threw stones at protesters who were praying behind the wall.  After the tires were on fire there was a lot of smoke, approximately three meters high, and the fire was as high as the wall.[67]   

Al-Yafii said that the men setting fire to the wall were from the GPC but did not explain how he knew this.

Once they were partially obscured by smoke, gunmen—many with headscarves wrapped around their faces—began firing into the air from rooftops of residential and commercial buildings on Ring Road on the southern side of the wall, according to numerous witnesses.Protesters on the northern side of the wall were chanting “We are peaceful!” But some began throwing stones.[68]

Much of the shooting came from the Mahweet governor’s house.[69] Ali Ismail al-Mutawakel, a carpenter at a furniture store located in front of the governor’s house, said he saw three guards from al-Ahwal’s family on the governor’s rooftop shooting in the air.[70]  Witness Abd al-Karim al-Yafii testified that he saw Ali Ahmad al-Ahwal, the CID investigations director and governor’s son, shooting as well:[71]

The son of the governor named Ali Ahmad was carrying an a’ali [assault rifle] and next to him were four of their guards, some were carrying sniper rifles and some were carrying an a’ali. … They were shooting live rounds from the rooftop of the governor’s house that faced the protesters.

Witnesses said they saw three groups of gunmen move toward the wall. One witness, Walid Hussein Hassan al-Nimri, said local residents identified the gunmen as members of three local gangs:

I saw smoke and heard gun shots. Then I saw three groups of armed men covering their faces. Some had small guns, others had AK-47s…They moved toward the wall and started firing at protesters.[72]

The indictment states that “The fact that these three gangs were present at the same time signifies cooperation with Ali Ahmad al-Ahwal  in attacking the protesters present on Ring Road.”[73]

A witness also testified that an officer in the First Armored Division, Maj. Abdullah al-Mikhlafi, led a group of gunmen who fired at protesters from atop a honey store near the wall.[74]

Raja, the Suhail TV cameraman, climbed up a utility pole and saw protesters tearing down the wall. At that point, he said, the killings started:

The protesters were chanting, “The people want the downfall of the regime!” … The youths started tearing holes in the wall with their bare hands, and the gunmen started to fire directly at the protesters. There was a shower of bullets. I think I was targeted; whenever I moved from left to right, bullets followed me.

At one point as I moved a man stopped to talk to me and he was hit by a bullet in the chest. I don’t know if he lived. We both fell to the ground. Many people were falling. I didn’t know whether to cry or to keep filming.[75]

Abd al-Rashid al-Faqih, a human rights activist who at the time was a consultant with Human Rights Watch, rushed to the scene from his nearby home and watched the shootings unfold from a doorway about five buildings north of the wall. He told Human Rights Watch:

The bullets were falling on the protesters like a rain shower. I could see them hit walls and doors. In areas where the smoke cleared I could see gunmen on a roof shooting randomly at protesters. A child was walking toward the wall with a relative, perhaps his father. I told the man, “Don’t walk that way.” A short while later I saw him carrying back the child, who had been shot. I saw many people die.[76]

Some protesters began a grim shuttle service, transporting bodies to a clinic at Change Square in blankets and returning with the blankets filled with stones to throw at the gunmen.[77]

Khahil Qaed Muhammad al-Mulaiki, vice-principal of a private school, had been praying near the wall and pressed closer after seeing the wounded being rushed to the clinic. En route, he spotted a friend, Ali al-Salahi, a member of the Change Square security committee, standing near the wall. Al-Mulaiki said:

On the way to the wall I saw him [al-Salahi] alive. On the way back from the wall I saw him dead. It looked like a big machine gun shot him. Later I saw footage from Suhail TV of the pool of blood coming from his body and another protester putting his hands in that blood and putting that blood on his chest. Ali al-Salahi was a newlywed. He had just furnished an apartment for his new family but he never got to live in it.

Time and place lost all meaning. All of us close to the wall we thought we’d be killed at any moment.[78]

Local resident Salim al-Aulaqi reached the wall shortly after protesters had torn it down:

I could see a pool of blood in front of the wall and several spots of blood and the remains of someone’s brain. One of the youths was trying to collect pieces of a martyr’s skull to bring back to the hospital.[79]

Mosque Filled with Dead and Dying

In a span of three hours, the gunmen killed at least 45 protesters and wounded some 200 others, according to medical officials at the scene, victims’ relatives, and lawyers interviewed by Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch believes the number of dead could be as high as 52 if those who died over the following days from their injuries are included. The prosecution’s indictment listed 43 protesters killed and another 127 wounded.[80]

All of those killed and at least 40 of the wounded were shot with semi-automatic weapons in the head, chest, or other areas of the upper body, in what medical officials and lawyers for the protesters described as the work of trained marksmen who intended to kill.[81]

At that time, the field hospital at Change Square, located inside a mosque, was little more than a makeshift clinic. Within minutes, medical workers were overwhelmed by the carnage. Within a half-hour of the first victims’ arrivals, the hospital was issuing urgent appeals for blood donations. Doctors conducted 27 surgeries that afternoon, although the hospital was equipped for no more than three at a time, a head nurse at the field hospital told Human Rights Watch.[82]

British freelance journalist Tom Finn described the hospital as “massively under-supplied”:  

The whole mosque was filled with the dead and the dying. There were children among the injured. A handful of doctors were moving from case to case, trying to distinguish between people who had been shot so severely they couldn’t be helped and those who could.  They had a decrepit old battered ambulance; the wheels were spinning in the mud.  You could hear the shooting from inside. It was very loud.[83]

Ibrahim Murfaq, a volunteer paramedic who was driving the ambulance, said his team alone made more than 30 trips between the wounded and the field hospital.[84] 

Protesters Beat, Detain Suspected Gunmen

After they tore down the wall, waves of protesters crossed into the area from which the gunmen were shooting and stormed the governor’s home and nearby buildings in search of the attackers, even as the gunfire continued. The protesters raided the governors’ building and set it on fire. They confiscated several assault rifles and bags of ammunition from the buildings, according to witness testimonies and interviews with Human Rights Watch. [85]

The protesters dragged at least 14 suspected gunmen from the buildings and nearby streets, and beat some of them brutally. Sami al-Soofi, a school teacher, described the scene at the Mahweet governor’s house:

The protesters were throwing mattresses, blankets, even doors from the windows. They were enraged. I saw protesters carry out Kalashnikovs [assault rifles] and flour sacks filled with bullets. Then they brought down two balatija. They were beating them hard.[86]

When protesters removed an alleged gunman from the buildings, “they would beat him like it was a zaffa [a boisterous wedding procession],” said al-Faqih, the human rights activist. “Except that instead of clapping they were beating.”[87]

The protesters grabbed one alleged gunman, private security guard Muhammad al-Sanabani, 26, from the front of his house on Ring Road. Al-Sanabani described the beating to Human Rights Watch from a cage inside a Sanaa courtroom while on trial for the attack:

The protesters beat me and put me in a blanket and brought me to Change Square, beating me the whole way there. There were so many people beating me I couldn’t count.[88]

The protesters told media that five of the alleged gunmen were carrying government identity cards.[89]

The protesters brought at least 14 suspected gunmen to Change Square, where they were detained and questioned by lawyers active inside the protest camp. Muhammad Mehdi al-Bakoli, a lawyer with the House of Law Organization (OHL), a group representing several defendants, said the protesters beat some of his clients severely and detained them in squalid bathrooms and unlicensed jails.[90]

Later that afternoon, the Change Square protesters turned the suspected gunmen over to the headquarters of the First Armored Division of the Yemeni army, about a kilometer away. The First Armored Division in turn transferred the suspects to the custody of a military prosecutor.

The number of suspected gunmen detained at that time remains in dispute. Lawyers for the protesters who were wounded or killed in the attack say 14 suspects were brought to the First Armored Division.[91] Documents from the Public Prosecution also refer to 14 suspects as detained, as did the First Armored Division’s media office.[92] The day after the attack, a government spokesman told media that 16 suspects had been arrested.[93]

More recently, lawyers for the OHL asserted that the Change Square protesters brought 28 suspects to the First Armored Division. Of those, the First Armored Division transferred only 16 to a military prosecutor and the whereabouts of the others remain unknown, the OHL lawyers said.[94]

One witness said that CID intelligence chief Ali al-Ahwal, the Mahweet governor’s son and alleged ringleader of the attack, was among the group of alleged gunmen who were transferred to the First Armored Division. Ali al-Ahwal has not been seen since the day of the attack and is listed by the prosecution as a fugitive from justice. The witness, Muhammad Abdullah Daba’a, who was among the defendants transferred to the First Armored Division, testified he saw Ali al-Ahwal around sunset the day of the attack:

They [protesters] were making celebratory noises, saying the son of the governor arrived, the one who shot.  They called him a serial killer.  I saw him and they referred to him as the son of al-Baidani [Governor Ahmad Ali al-Ahwal] ... We remained handcuffed [with rope] for about one hour, and then we were transferred to the FAD [First Armored Division].[95]

Attorney General Ali Ahmad Nasser al-Awash, an appointee of President Saleh, told Human Rights Watch that Ali al-Ahwal was never detained.[96]

Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the First Armored Division’s commander at the time of the attack, told Human Rights Watch that 14 suspects were brought to the First Armored Division and that all had been turned over to a military prosecutor there. The only suspects who were released, he said in a reference to more than 30 defendants whom the prosecution has listed as fugitives from justice, were let go “on the orders of [then-president] Ali Abdullah Saleh.”[97]

A former Saleh confidant and one of the most powerful officials in Yemen, General al-Ahmar defected to the opposition three days after the Friday of Dignity attack and deployed his troops to protect the demonstrators at Change Square, ostensibly to protest the March 18 shootings.[98] General al-Ahmar is closely aligned with Islah.  For more than a year after Saleh agreed in November 2011 to resign, First Armored Division troops guarded the house of President Hadi. Many Yemenis view General al-Ahmar as one of the new president’s closest advisors.[99]

State of Emergency

When President Saleh declared a state of emergency the night of the attack, he also banned the public from carrying weapons in the capital.[100] Parliament five days later approved the state of emergency, which allowed media censorship, barred street protests, and gave security forces sweeping powers to arrest and detain suspects without judicial process.[101]The decree lapsed after 30 days.

The March 18 attack provoked a national and international outcry and added further momentum—as well as elite support—to the protest movement. Tens of thousands of Yemenis turned out for the funerals of slain protesters. In addition to General al-Ahmar, dozens of Yemeni government officials from Saleh’s GCP as well as opposition parties resigned in protest; they included cabinet members, members of parliament, and diplomats including Yemen’s chief envoy to the United Nations.[102] Sadiq al-Ahmar (no relation to Gen. al-Ahmar), the head of the powerful Hashid tribal confederation, also threw his support behind the opposition.[103]

Saleh rejected mounting calls for his resignation, deployed tanks throughout the capital, and on March 20 dissolved his cabinet.[104]