The acting executive director of Yemen's Social Fund for Development has been found dead after being abducted in the country’s de facto capital, Aden.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the killing of British-Yemeni dual national Wesam Qaid, but experts have told The National that suspicion is falling on the Houthis. Mr Qaid fled Sanaa two years ago.
“They had threatened him a day before his killing due to his work in relocating the SFD from Sanaa to Aden,” said Baraa Shiban, researcher and political analyst on Yemen and the Gulf, at the Royal United Services Institute.
Video circulated by local Yemeni media outlets purportedly showed Mr Qaid being abducted from his car in daylight by masked, armed men. His death has prompted immediate condemnation and calls for justice from the UN and several European states.
The UK's ambassador to Yemen, Abda Sharif, said she was “furious and shocked” at the assassination. “The perpetrators must be identified, held accountable and swiftly brought to justice,” she wrote on X.
The German and EU embassies in Yemen issued similar statements calling for an investigation. Yemen's Prime Minister Shaya Al Zindani directed “security and military agencies” to take “urgent and decisive measures” against the perpetrators, the state news agency Saba reported. The UN special envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, lauded Mr Qaid's work, which he said “represented all that Yemen needs”.
Mr Qaid is the second public figure to be killed in Aden in less than two weeks, following the death of Abdulrahman Al Shaer, director of Nawras Private School. Aden's security administration said it had apprehended four suspects believed to have been involved in Mr Al Shaer's killing. “The crime was perpetrated by an organised criminal cell that had been planning to target a number of preachers and imams,” it said.
Salah Ali Salah, a project officer at the Sana’a Centre for Strategic Studies, warned that Mr Qaid’s killing could set a dangerous precedent.
Financial institutions in Yemen have increasingly relocated their headquarters from Houthi-controlled Sanaa to Aden to avoid US sanctions imposed after Washington redesignated the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in 2025.
“Entire organisations, large companies, banks and commercial firms have moved to Aden, especially after the US Treasury sanctions,” Mr Salah said. “Now, many of these officials are feeling extremely worried, based on information I obtained from contacts with several people in Aden.”
