Islamic Awakening: Yemenis want corrupt figures cleansed

Yemenis have held massive anti-regime demonstrations across the country to call for the expulsion of the remnants of former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime.

Yemeni protesters on Thursday took to the streets afresh in several cities, including the capital of Sana’a and the southern city of Taizz.

The demonstrators were calling for the “cleansing of the current parliament.”

They also called for the prosecution of Saleh, who has been granted immunity from prosecution under an Arab-brokered power-transfer deal.

Under the proposal, brokered by the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council and eventually signed by Saleh in November 2011, the embattled Yemeni ruler was given amnesty in return for relinquishing power to his deputy Abdrabuh Mansur al-Hadi.

The Yemenis, however, have been holding mass demos in condemnation of the deal, demanding that Saleh should stand trial for the killing of hundreds of protesters in the regime’s brutal crackdown on the popular uprising in the country.

The revolution in Yemen erupted in February last year when hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets on an almost daily basis to call for an end to the widespread poverty and corruption in the country and to demand Saleh to step down.