Ali Abdullah Saleh

Having been deposed by the 2011 Yemeni revolution, Saleh stayed politically present: in February 2013 he opened a museum documenting his 33 years in power in a wing of the Al Saleh Mosque in Sanaa, displaying among other items the burnt trousers he had worn during the June 2011 attempt on his life. In October that year the UN Special Envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, said Saleh and his son had the right to run in the next presidential election, since the 2011 deal did not cover political incapacitation. Al Jazeera described how over years he built a complicated network of alliances among the country's military, civil and tribal groups, fuelling social divisions by playing enemies off one another.

In 2014 the Houthis took Sanaa. Saleh was identified as a behind-the-scenes leader, and tribesmen and government forces loyal to him joined the Houthi march to power. That year the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on him for threatening peace and obstructing Yemen's political process, with a global travel ban and asset freeze; in November thousands of Saleh and Houthi supporters filled Sanaa's streets to protest the sanctions. Al Jazeera also aired a recording it received in January 2015, reportedly made in October after the Houthi takeover of Sanaa, in which Saleh could be heard coordinating military and political moves with a Houthi leader.

Although six wars had been fought between Saleh's government and the Houthis, he officially announced his alliance with them after Saudi-led air strikes hit his home, having previously asked Gulf countries for safe passage out of Yemen as an Arab coalition began its 2015 campaign against the Houthis. On 28 July 2016 the two sides announced a formal alliance against the Saudi-led coalition, run by a ten-member Supreme Political Council with five members from Saleh's General People's Congress and five from the Houthis; the members were sworn in on 14 August. At the 2016 revolution anniversary gathering Saleh offered an olive branch to the coalition, calling for direct talks with the Saudi regime without returning to the UN Security Council, and that same year he signed a Houthi-appointed political council that allowed the Houthis to run the country from Sanaa.

Cracks soon emerged. In August 2016 the Houthis condemned his description of them as a "militia", and relations deteriorated rapidly when Khalid al-Radhi, a senior GPC member and close Saleh adviser, was shot dead. Al Jazeera assessed that he accumulated private wealth and used rewards and punishment to stop his rivals from uniting. Armed clashes broke out between the former allies in Sanaa from 28 November 2017, and in a televised statement on 2 December Saleh declared his split, calling on supporters to take back the country and expressing openness to dialogue with the Saudi-led coalition; the Houthis accused him of staging a "coup" and of treason. Yemeni officials told Al Jazeera his decision to break the alliance had been planned by Abu Dhabi earlier that year.

Saleh was killed in Sanaa on 4 December 2017. Accounts differ. One account holds that he was travelling toward Marib to flee into Saudi-controlled territory when a rocket-propelled grenade disabled his vehicle in an ambush and he was shot in the head by a Houthi sniper. His party officials denied this, stating he was killed at his house in Sanaa, or that a convoy carrying him and other party officials was attacked as they fled toward his home town of Sanhan. The Houthis published a video allegedly showing his body with a gunshot wound to the head. Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi called the killing "the day of the fall of the treasonous conspiracy", while denying any quarrel with the GPC. Saleh's death was confirmed by a senior aide and by his nephew; Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi offered condolences and called for an uprising against the Houthis. Saleh was buried in Sanaa on 9 December 2017; a Houthi commander said the burial was held in strict conditions with no more than 20 people attending. A UN document records that the Government of Yemen submitted a report to the United Nations concerning the circumstances of the death of the former president who had resigned the deposed presidency.