Almotamar.net - Head of the Information Office at the General People’s Congress (GPC) in Yemen Tareq al-Shamy has on Thursday said the presence of al-Qaeda organisation in Yemen is not as it is pictured by the media. He added,” There are some Yemeni elements or those that came from outside Yemen, “but the government has worked for tracking down those elements and downsizing them.

Al-Shamy said that during the past years security bodies implemented many operations against al-Qaeda elements but the problem of confronting al-Qaeda elements lies in the fact that those affiliates of al-Qaeda have no known specific positions, they move from one area to another and the government has taken all legal measures to chase those elements and ordering them to surrender to security authorities. In addition, the government has asked social leaderships in the areas where al-Qaeda elements are present to hand them over and not to allow them to be present among citizens. When there is a need for dealing pre-emptive strikes to those elements, the state does deal such strikes to those terrorist elements.

In his statement to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (Middle East) newspaper, al-Shamy affirmed that allegations about the existence of relation between the authority and elements of al-Qaeda as unfounded, saying such an illusion attempt is an illogical matter and groundless.

He pointed out that the confrontation between the state’s military and security apparatuses and even the local authority with those terrorist elements is attributed to that Yemen is affected by any terrorist act harming the country’s reputation and its security and stability and consequently impedes the process of development and limits investments.