SANAA (Sputnik) — As several marked "top secret" telegrams of the diplomatic mission claimed that Lt. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the former commander of the Yemeni army's 1st Armored Division, was heading the conspiracy against the ex-president. The first data about the assassination attempt was sent to Riyadh on May 28, 2011, just a week before it was committed.
"We inform, that we received data confirming information of the General Intelligence Bureau at the Embassy that Ali Mohsen Saleh al-Ahmar, commander of the 1st Armored Division of the Army, with the support of some members of the General People's Congress party and the leadership of the presidential guard, in the coming days will make an assassination attempt on Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh. It is assumed that the Americans are aware of it," the text of a telegram, handed to Sputnik by a source close to the Yemeni General People's Congress party, controlled by the former Yemeni president, read.
The country’s ex-president was the target of an assassination attempt in a mosque on June 3, 2011. As the gunmen shelled the mosque, located in the vicinity of the presidential palace in Sanaa, Saleh suffered from shrapnel wounds, broken bones, smoke inhalation, internal bleeding and extensive burns.
Al-Ahmar in the beginning of last week was appointed vice-president in the current Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi's government.
