On April 27, 2013, a trial court in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, ordered the probe of Saleh and other former ranking officials – including his nephews Yahya Saleh and Tareq Saleh.

Yemeni prosecutors should promptly comply with the order and also reopen the original investigation of the so-called Friday of Dignity massacre, Human Rights Watch said.

Gunmen in civilian clothes killed at least 45 protesters and wounded 200 others during a rally in Sanaa, part of the 2011 uprising against the Saleh government. The initial government investigation into the killings was marred by political interference, a Human Rights Watch report found.

“The court ordered investigation of former president Saleh and several top aides for the ‘Friday of Dignity’ massacre may prove a breakthrough for justice in Yemen, but only if prosecutors now do their jobs,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

“The authorities should leave no stone unturned until they have identified the people responsible for these killings and held them to account.”

A day after the court order, Attorney General Ali al-Awash also ordered an investigation of Saleh and his son Ahmed Ali, until recently the commander of the elite Republican Guard, in connection with the May 2011 shelling of a home belonging to the country’s powerful al-Ahmar tribe.

The strike killed several people including tribal mediators. At the time of the attack, the sheikhs had been trying to end a political standoff between Saleh and al-Ahmar family members who supported the uprising.

In October 2012, lawyers for victims of the Friday of Dignity massacre filed a motion seeking the indictment of the former president and senior officials, who were not among the 78 suspects already on trial for the killings. The court suspended the trial pending a ruling on the motion. Most of the defendants had been registered as fugitives from justice.

Investigations of former government officials are complicated by an immunity law that Yemen’s parliament passed as part of the political deal under which Saleh stepped down in February 2012, ending the year-long popular uprising. The amnesty grants sweeping immunity to Saleh and all those who served with him during his 33-year rule. Victims’ lawyers hope the new investigation will serve as a test case of the immunity law. The law would not prevent the prosecution of Saleh and others by courts outside the country with jurisdiction over international crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

The attack on a rally that demonstrators called the “Friday of Dignity” was the deadliest against protesters of the uprising. Human Rights Watch research found that the Central Security Forces, a paramilitary force then headed by Yahya Saleh, withdrew from the area of the demonstration the night before the killings and largely failed to intervene once the shootings began. Prosecutors never questioned the Salehs and other top officials in connection with the killings, and the former president also dismissed the attorney general at the time, replacing him with al-Awash, just six weeks after he began investigating possible government involvement.

President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, who succeeded Saleh, removed Yahya Saleh as Central Security Forces chief in December 2012. Last year Hadi also removed Tareq Saleh from his positions heading the Presidential Guard and the 3rd Brigade of the Republican Guard, but in April he appointed Tareq Saleh as defense attaché to Germany. The former president remains in Yemen as head of his political party, the General People’s Congress.

Yemen should explicitly prohibit both government forces and non-state armed groups from occupying schools for military purposes when it endangers students, teachers, or the children’s education, Human Rights Watch said.

The 46-page report, “Classrooms in the Crosshairs: Military Use of Schools in Yemen’s Capital,” released by HRW details the occupation of schools by government security forces, militias, and opposition armed groups, risking the lives and education of tens of thousands of students. Forces on both sides used schools as barracks, bases, surveillance posts, and firing positions. Combatants also stored weapons and ammunition, detained prisoners, and in some cases tortured or otherwise abused detainees on school grounds or in school buildings.

 Yemen already has the lowest rates of literacy in the Middle East and some of the lowest rates of school enrollment in the world. Until the Yemeni government prohibits the deployment of armed forces and groups in schools where it violates international law, the lives of students, teachers, and school administrators will remain at unnecessary risk in conflict areas throughout the country, HRW said.

“Young people played a crucial role in Yemen’s 2011 uprising, but they also suffered greatly during the conflict,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and a co-author of the report.

In March 2012, Human Rights Watch visited 19 schools in Sanaa that government or opposition forces had occupied, including seven schools in which they continued to live or operate. Some forces had taken over schools completely, but in most of the cases investigated, they had occupied only part of the schools, while teachers and students tried to continue their classes alongside the armed men.

“The moment soldiers enter a school, it becomes a military target and stops being a safe place for students,” Motaparthy said.

In addition to endangering students and teachers, the military use of schools further hindered children’s access to an adequate education, Human Rights Watch said. At schools used by government troops and armed groups in Sanaa during the uprising, Human Rights Watch documented disruptions to studies, lower school enrollment, decreased school attendance, and damage to school infrastructure. 

Military use of schools harmed girls’ education in particular, Human Rights Watch said. Girls’ school enrollment already falls behind boys in Yemen’s highly gender-segregated and conservative society. When troops enter their schools, girls drop out in disproportionately higher numbers or miss greater portions of the school year, teachers and principals told Human Rights Watch. They said some parents preferred to remove their daughters from school rather than allow them to study alongside armed men or in temporary classrooms where they mixed with boy students.

According to UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, armed forces and armed groups had conducted attacks on at least 82 schools in Sanaa and occupied at least 54 as of November 2011, just before Saleh signed an agreement brokered by the Gulf Coordination Council (GCC) to leave office.

Human Rights Watch urged international donors that fund school reconstruction projects, such as the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Germany, and the Netherlands, to press the government to explicitly ban any future military use of schools that unnecessarily places students and teachers at risk and deprives children of their right to education

6.6 million votes out of the potential 10.2 million went to Hadi, according to Election commission chief Mohammed Al-Hakimi. More than  99 per cent of the 6.6 million votes cast were for Hadi.  The remaining 25,000 ballots casts were invalid. The only choice on the ballot was to vote “yes” for Hadi. Hadi, Yemen’s former vice president, assumes office as part of a transitional deal brokered by Gulf countries and backed by Western powers to end months of deadly unrest in which thousands regularly took to the streets to call for Saleh to go in one of the Arab Spring’s most enduring uprisings.  Hadi stood as the sole candidate to replace Saleh in a power transfer deal backed by Gulf countries and  Western powers.

After his inauguration, the new president sent a message that Yemen must now tackle pressing issues sucha as Yemen’s economic problems  and promised to initiate a dialogue with all political forces to restore security ” where in its absence  any economic growth would be impossible” and “continue the fight against Al Qaeda,” he continued.  The new president called on his countrymen to open a new chapter on “Building a Yemen which will encompass all citizens.”

Hadi, elected for a transitional two-year term, will assume his new duties Monday at the presidential palace where they will officially receive the reins of the country by Saleh.While Saleh returned early today in Sana’a from a trip for medical reasons in the U.S. and settled in his private residence, according to political sources in Yemen, reported Al Jazeera.